It was a cold windy Sunday night on Nob Hill for the Obama event. Odd to see real supporters outside, mostly white, and the well-heeled (or at least, well-connected) on the inside. Reports say Obama raised $7.8 million at the Fairmont Hotel event.
But more important to APAs is how it really exposed the schism within our community.
That South Asians and Pacific Islanders got a more intimate fly by with B.O. that night is significant.
It really shows how little post-primary unity exists within the broader Asian Pacific Islander community. Asian Americans in California, primarily Chinese, were for Clinton in the California primary and many have been reluctant to fully embrace B.O.
Why else would Obama differentiate the South Asian and Pacific Islanders from the bulk in our group–Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, Southeast Asian?
I’m sure it was in deference to one of his point people out west, SF DA Kamala Harris, herself a South Asian.
But if he wanted to attract those on the fence, what does it signal to other Asian Americans when the most quotable thing of the night is Obama saying,
“Not only do I think I’m a desi, but I’m a desi.” (Desi is the insider’s term referring to South Asian).
What will Obama say to a group of his supporters who are Chinese? Filipinos? Koreans?
“I am a Berliner”?
(Oh, I forgot. Evoking Kennedy is an early Bill Clinton thing. Though himself a globetrotting presumptive nominee, B.O.’s thing is MLK).
The chameleon-like Obama is appearing to be someone who will say anything for a buck. He’s raising and spending money at an historic rate. This is the candidate of change? Or the candidate of calculated ambition?
The way B.O. glad handed from the South Asian event to the more mainstream $2,300 a plate dinner that attracted mainstream liberals (folks like developer Walter Shorenstein, and Peter Pastreich of Sausalito, former head of the SF Symphony) looks like the activity of a master traditional pol, not exactly what I’d call a “man of the people.”