Before SuperFaTuesday fades from our collective minds, I wanted to share a few different conversations that people have had with their parents about who to support.

Tamasha’s mother played true to her demographic and supported Hillary as did her “new-grandmother aunt”. I loved the conversation between Tamasha and her Aatya:

Aatya: Sweetie, can I make one last plea for you to vote for Hillary?
Tamasha: Um, it’s not really going to work, but tell me why you’re voting for her.
Aatya: Women have to vote for her.
T: Yeah, see, that’s not enough for me. Her being a woman, I mean.
Aatya: Women my age have to vote for her.
T: Huh?
Aatya: You haven’t had to face the glass ceilings that I have, working with men who have meetings in the men’s room and come back out zipping up their pants making proclamations.
T: Fair enough. But Obama has more things going for him that appeal to me, and he has specific ideas and beliefs that more precisely match up with mine.
Aatya: Just wait.Just wait until you have to go into the bathroom with these men while they pee and make decisions. [Link]

My mother feels similarly, although she put it in less colorful language. She simply said that it was time for a woman, and that she was tired of women hitting a glass ceiling, and being called shrill when they’re just being as aggressive as their male counterparts. She liked Obama plenty, but figured Obama could run in 4 or 8 years once he had a little more experience. Continue reading →

As I’ve been thinking about the democratic front-runners, I’ve been taking note of how different desis have been choosing sides.

Key Clinton advisor Neera Tanden made it clear in the New Yorker Magazine that she thinks Obama is too soft for the dirty work of winning an election:

Advisers to Clinton told me that there is something naïve, even potentially fatal, in Obama’s vision of leading the country out of its current political battles… Obama will be annihilated by what members of the Clinton campaign call “the Republican attack machine.” Neera Tanden, the campaign’s policy director, … cautioned that the general election will be brutal. “You cannot let your guard down with these guys,” she said of right-wing politicians. “They take people’s strengths and make them weaknesses; if you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile. …Both of the Clintons have been through it and won before.” [Link]

From a more parochial perspective, the Clintons have a decades long association with South Asians:

No other candidate has raised more money from the Indian America community than Hillary Clinton. More Americans who trace their roots to India are working for Hillary Clinton. [Link]

As a young’un 16 years ago I worked a South Asian fund raiser at the Waldorf for the Candidate Bill Clinton (just after the Gennifer Flowers scandal). There’s a reason why Hillary herself cracked:

“I can certainly run for the senate seat in Punjab and win easily,”… [Link]

However, as the primary season (and general election) grew nearer, Hillary distanced herself from public appearances with Sikhs, perhaps to avoid more photos like these. Instead, she cancelled several fundraisers and refused to engage with issues that were important:

She stands up for the Sikh community when politically expedient. On the campaign trail, she made several cancellations to appear with Sikhs in public and refused to join Obama in supporting the Sikh Coalition’s appeal to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to protect turbans from searches at airports. [Link]