DENVER
There’s nothing quite like the hot air inside the arena of a political convention. Despite the frigid a/c, the rhetoric is so thick and duplicitous, after four days, it’s hard to know what’s true anymore.
But the truth of the Mile High Democrats in 2008 is obvious when you go back to real-life, away from the world-wide TV studio that is the Pepsi Center.
That’s when you get a sense of the achievement we are witnessing in Denver when a person of color goes to the mountain tops and becomes the presidential nominee of a major American political party.
If you’re too young to grasp the historical significance of that, the Democrats have built-in the legacy, with the acceptance speech of Barack Obama on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream speech.”
When Obama accepts the nomination it will be his time to soar. The pundits will no doubt want to hear more about his $1,000 emergency rebates for the middle class and how or why he’ll tax greedy oil companies’ outrageous profits. But those are the quotidian details that muck up the greatness of the moment.
As a person of color in America as an Asian American, who has been both at the brunt of society’s beneficence and scorn, I just had to be here to savor it.
Obama may not have a chance to soak it all in. He’ll be too busy trying to make sure it all sticks, to assure that it’s not all just a dream.
And that won’t be easy.
The Bradley Effect
One of the open questions between now and November is how America’s racism will evolve and find cover in other excuses to not vote for Obama. His experience? Your love of Hillary? Your distrust of his political ambition?
All of that gets in the way of the central question: Can America embrace the first real opportunity to send a person of color to the White House?
No one likes to be so direct about it, but the concern is there. How racist will America be this election?
Norm Mineta, the former Sec. of Commerce under Clinton, as well as the former Sec. of Transportation under Bush II, said the race issue is a real one.
Mineta, one of the first and most ardent Obama supporters, mentioned the so-called “Bradley Effect,” where in 1982 Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African American running for governor had an 8 point lead in the polls, then lost by a 2 point margin to Republican George Deukmejian.
Voters obviously lied to pollsters and said they could vote for a black man. But in the voting booth, they just couldn’t muster the ethics to do it.
Mineta said he knows of at least one Caucasian woman, a lifelong Democrat, who has admitted she’d have a hard time voting for a black man.
“And I thought, in this day and age, people are still saying that,” Mineta said.
Could Asian Americans might be prone to the “Bradley Effect”?
“I think there was black/yellow conflict,” Mineta said. “But I don’t think it really exists today. I think we’re past it. We’ve worked too closely with the Hispanic and African-American communities. APIs aren’t that large, just 4 percent of the population. We have to work collectively with others.”
Time to get off the fence
Asian Americans helped Hillary win the California primary overwhelmingly. But despite some July polls that say Asian Americans now solidly back Obama over John McCain, I was surprised by the number of Asian American women I’ve talked who wavered to the very end.
“It’s hard for me to embrace Barack,” said Lusianna Ro, 36, a Chinese-American Clinton supporter whom I met on day one of the convention.
Then came Clinton’s do-the-right-thing speech on Tuesday, a great speech that gave us all a taste of what could have been. But then she gave the sign to her followers of what is: “Barack Obama is my candidate. And he must be our President.”
The next day, Ro was set. “She reminded everyone of the goals and ideals of the Democratic Party, and that the Democrats need to get behind Obama,” Ro told me. “I’m not sure she convinced me he’s the right person,but he’s the only candidate at this point.”
There still may be room for the Bradley effect. But even before Hillary’s speech, some Asian American women at the convention were already coming around.
“I’m a 100 percent behind Obama,” said Yvonne Lee, a San Francisco Police Commisioner attending the convention. Women’s choice is her concern since a president appoints Supreme Court justices and Roe v.Wade could be at stake in the future. Affirmative action is also a concern. “We need someone who can balance the continuing challenges we face as minorities,” said Lee concerned for her family and friends. “Mc Cain is not going to get us there.”
Certainly not in the near or distant future.
Bringing it home
As I look back, the best bit of rhetoric I heard all week was in a Denver Walgreens with other weary convention goers, some of whom held Obama signs and campaign gear. As we lined up at the cash register (where our dollar doesn’t go nearly as far as it did 8 years ago), an African American Denverite, who appeared hard-on-his luck, walked by and observed: “What a beautiful thing,” the man said. “When in America have you seen this kind of love for a black man? What a beautiful thing.”
After a night of phony, pumped up speeches on the convention floor, the man’s statement struck me as the one truth that remains with me after a week of rah-rah.
When has America shown the love? When Michael Jackson’s “Beat it,” went gold? When Michael Jordan three-peated? Maybe in the arts, or in sports, where race isn’t questioned, but never in America in something so real, so vital as presidential politics.
Now comes the trust part. Will Asian Americans help make it all stick?