Democratic presidential nominee U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris delivers a speech at a campaign rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Aug. 20, 2024. (Kyodo)
CHICAGO (Kyodo) — Kamala Harris has injected new energy into the U.S. presidential race, with Democrats, including those of Asian descent and other people of color, excited about having a better chance of defeating Republican nominee Donald Trump than when Joe Biden was on the ticket.
The growing enthusiasm behind Harris’ campaign for the White House was evident among participants at the Democratic Party’s four-day convention in Chicago through Thursday, initially planned as part of Biden’s bid for a second term.
Among the tens of thousands of Democratic delegates, supporters and volunteers involved in the political fanfare, there was far more ethnic diversity than seen at the Republican Party’s national convention last month in Milwaukee, which formally crowned Trump as its nominee for the third consecutive presidential election.
“It’s an exciting time,” said Keith Umemoto, a California delegate and a senior member of the party’s Asian American and Pacific Islander Caucus, adding that he expects Harris and her administration will embody the America of now, unlike Trump.
Umemoto, a 68-year-old third-generation Japanese American, said he believes the United States will be able to have more “empathy” toward people with different values if Harris prevails over Trump and becomes the first female, first Black woman and first Asian American president of the country.
Asia is the world’s biggest and most diverse continent, and Asian American communities across the United States are not uniform by any means, but overall they have been the country’s fastest-growing bloc of eligible voters.
Although Asian Americans are not yet a very large minority group, compared with the Black and Latino electorates, their votes could determine the outcome of the Nov. 5 presidential contest.
The number of Asian Americans who voted in the 2020 election in swing states such as Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania surpassed the presidential margin of victory, according to AAPI Data, a research organization focused on Asian American and Pacific Islanders.
Arvind Venkat, a Democrat elected to serve his first term in Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives in 2022, said he knows from experience that reaching out to Asian American voters will be important.
Venkat, whose parents — like Harris’ mother — immigrated to the United States from southern India, thinks the presidential race will ultimately “come down to who can articulate a vision for the country and, frankly, for the world.”
He said women, young people and minority communities have been especially reinvigorated by her candidacy.
It remains to be seen whether Harris can build on her current momentum. But officials around the world are already looking for clues to indicate if or how Harris would be any different from Biden on major foreign policy issues.
Biden administration officials and foreign policy scholars have suggested that, should Harris win the election, U.S. policies concerning Asia would be less likely to change than those involving other regions.
“She is a faithful steward of our alliances and partnerships,” Mira Rapp-Hooper, White House senior director for East Asia and Oceania, said at a think tank event last week in Washington, when asked about Harris’ future Indo-Pacific policy.
Biden’s July 21 exit from the race changed the dynamics of the election. Many recent polls have shown that Harris is starting to pick up the support of voters called “double haters,” who held strongly negative views of both Biden and Trump.
Such voters are believed to have helped the 59-year-old vice president open a lead over Trump nationally and in some swing states, although she is still virtually tied with the 78-year-old former president.
Biden’s sudden withdrawal from the race and endorsement of Harris initially created a great deal of uncertainty, but the rise of Harris has brought a sense of reassurance for anyone fretting over a likely second term for the unpredictable Trump.
Judy Chu, who became the first Chinese American woman elected to Congress in 2009, said she believes Harris will carry on the efforts of the Biden administration to build even stronger relationships with U.S. allies in Asia.
Chu, a House Democrat from California, told Kyodo News in Chicago during the convention that such moves are essential due to the growing tensions between the United States and China. But she expressed hope that Harris will continue to take a measured approach.
“There are many Republicans who want to turn it into conflict, and that can only hurt all of us. We do not want to get into conflict,” she said. “Competition is something that occurs between many countries.”
Biden took office as arguably one of the best-prepared U.S. presidents on foreign policy.
As Harris lacks the depth of experience of the 81-year-old incumbent, it seems inevitable that she would continue on his trajectory, at least until she felt more comfortable handling world affairs, said See Seng Tan, an expert on Asian affairs who is currently a research adviser at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.
For the Indo-Pacific, Tan said a Harris presidency would be better than a second-term Trump, considering the “rude shock” he gave the region while in office, with his attacks on multilateralism and accusations of countries cheating the United States on trade.
As to what a potential Harris policy on the region may look like, he said it would be possible for her to “push harder on human rights than Biden has done,” noting that as a prosecutor-turned-senator, for example, she backed bills promoting human rights in Hong Kong and for Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang region.
He also said Harris would likely further strengthen ties with some Southeast Asian countries such as Singapore and Vietnam as part of efforts to “balance and counter” China’s rising power, and that they may receive “near-equal attention” to Washington’s formal allies in the region, including Japan, the Philippines and South Korea.
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