Legislation and Institutions Matter: Why I’m Voting for Hillary Clinton (Now Joe Biden and Kamala Harris)
I’ll cast my vote for Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, even though I wish it were Bernie Sanders, whom I had voted for in the California primary. This will be my 8th U.S. presidential election.
I’m a registered Democrat, but I do not vote for the Democratic Party out of loyalty. I crossed the party line in 1996 to vote for Bob Dole, the Republican Party nominee, out of disgust of then-President Bill Clinton’s poor judgment surrounding the Monica Lewinsky affair and the Democratic Party’s fundraising scandal involving shady Asian donors.
In 2006 I voted for the California Green Party gubernatorial candidate Peter Camejo. I’d have chosen Camejo in this year’s election, if he was still alive and in the running.
Reagan Republican Wannabe
I came to America in 1980 as a refugee from Vietnam, the year Ronald Reagan, the former governor of of California, a Republican stalwart, won the U.S. presidential election, handily beat the Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter in a landslide, 489 to 49 electoral college votes. Like millions of immigrants and refugees fleeing from Central America, the former Soviet Union, Afghanistan and Southeast Asia at the time, Reagan was our hero. His soaring anti-communist rhetoric captivated us. I was ready to join the Republican Party because he had saved me and my fellow refugees from communism. Or so I had thought.
However, on my road to becoming a Republican I ran into history, thanks to the books and periodicals in the library at Merritt College, a community college up in the Oakland hills, east of San Francisco, and the 1984 Democratic National Convention, which was held in San Francisco.
Ronald Reagan wasn’t the hero who saved the nearly 2 million Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese refugees who began arriving in America by the thousands beginning in 1980. It was the Refugee Act of 1980, sponsored by the late U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy, signed into law by then-President Jimmy Carter, two Democrats, despite opposition from many members of Congress of both parties and the American public.
Then there was the 1984 Democratic National Convention, held in San Francisco. It was a pivotal moment in my American civics lesson. I vividly remember joining an electrified crowd in downtown San Francisco waiting to catch a glimpse of the Democratic presidential nominee, then-Vice President Walter Mondale, and his running mate Geraldine Ferraro, who was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York.
I was so taken by the diversity: Asian, Latino, black and white, some were waving the little American flags, craning our necks, tiptoeing as the pair’s motorcade wounding its way up Market Street to the Moscone Convention Center where the convention was being held.
Ferraro was clearly the star even though she wasn’t the top billing on the Democratic ticket.
The Bay Area was buzzing with political activities. The uphill battle against the popular incumbent Ronald Reagan did not dampen the Democrats’ spirit. I was enthralled by the nightly convention news coverage. I decided there and then that I wanted to be part of it, to become a U.S. citizen as soon as possible so I could vote, and that the Democratic Party was the place that someone who looked and sounded like me would be welcomed.
However, I had to wait until 1988 to vote in my first U.S. presidential election for the Democratic ticket of Michael Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen. A legal immigrant to the U.S. must reside as a permanent resident for at least 5 years before eligible for U.S. citizenship.
Elections May Not Matter, But Legislation and Institutions Do
I will cast my vote for Hillary Clinton on Tuesday with full understanding that something called the “Electoral College” will elect the next president, not the popular votes, and that America’s presidential election is not a “direct democracy” process, as in “one man, one vote.”
Both parties have been beholden to special interests, whether they be Wall Street or the Military-industrial Complex, religious groups or labor unions. The two-party system has created political gridlock and paralysis. It’s a fractured system in desperate need of repairs.
But as an immigrant, a person of color, the Democratic Party best represents me, beginning with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was fought for with the blood, sweat and tears of African Africans, and signed into law by President Lyndon Baines Johnson, a Democrat.
Immigration reforms since 1965 have been an extension of the Civil Rights movement, both of which have enabled millions of immigrants and refugees like me to become American and gained the right to vote.
Legislation, such as healthcare, social welfare, education, and the institutions that have been borne out of them, have been advocated for and protected by the Democratic, not the Republican party.
Presidents come and go, but the foundation of our society needs to be strengthened, reinforced or repaired, not ripping apart or destroying, as the Republican presidential nominee has threatened to do.
Vietnamese refugees and immigrants like me leaned towards the Republican Party because we were enraptured by then-Ronald Reagan’s rhetoric or the GOP’s pro-business talking points without understanding that Republican policies since 1965 have not been favorable to immigrants and ethnic minorities.
My vote on Tuesday won’t be that of a “lesser of the two evils,” but that of a president whose party will be more than likely to stand up for those who look and sound like me. And lastly, a vote for Hillary Clinton is a reminder of how I felt as I watched Geraldine Ferraro speaking at the 1984 Democratic National Convention.
