As I have blogged before, the Vietnamese and Vietnamese Americans favor Senator John McCain for President, while most other Asian American ethnicities prefer Senator Barack Obama. Los Angeles has the largest aggregate number of those of Vietnamese heritage outside of Vietnam I believe and the Los Angeles Times reports on why McCain enjoys such wide support:
“… Many Vietnamese Americans are drawn to McCain’s support of Vietnamese refugees. As a senator, McCain led efforts to pass legislation in 1996 that would allow the children of Vietnamese political prisoners to reunite with parents who’d already been allowed to immigrate to the U.S… Many older Vietnamese who came to the U.S. as refugees are more concerned with foreign policy than domestic policy… “John McCain’s record and personal experiences as a prisoner in Vietnam has earned him a lot of credence with those Vietnamese who fled Vietnam or participated in the war,” he said, adding that second-generation Vietnamese may not hold the same emotional ties.”
Of course, you will also find Vietnamese Americans who are supporting Obama and reference McCain’s supposed racism by calling his Vietnamese captors “gooks.” Personally, if I were imprisoned and tortured for 5 years by the Vietnamese, I’m not sure I’d have a problem calling my captors gooks either.
Unfortunately for McCain, the Vietnamese American population is not that large and not really concentrated in any swing states. The political map for McCain for 270 electoral college votes looks slimmer by the day.
