Atanu Chakravarty: Don’t Ignore AAPI Voters – Vice President Harris Certainly Isn’t
By Atanu Chakravarty
As a Democratic strategist, one of the first things you learn is that you need to harness the power of our diverse, messy, passionate, and scattered coalition to win. You learn campaigns are about addition – bringing more and different voices into the fold. There is an inclusivity that made me feel comfortable with the Democratic party that is far from perfect, but attracted me – an Indian American and a first-generation American – to “fighting the good fight.” I believe in the power of addition and I know the Democratic party does as well – but this power seems to have been entirely lost on former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies.
The GOP’s current racialized attacks against Vice President Harris, who was the first-ever elected Indian American and second-ever Black woman to be elected U.S. Senator, illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding by former President Trump of who America is.
For example, last month, former President Trump unsurprisingly attacked Vice President Harris’ identity saying: “She was always of Indian heritage and she was only promoting Indian heritage, I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black… So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she black?”
The answer, of course, is that she is both and has always been both. But this commentary serves as a stark reminder that Trump is trying to push a narrative that divides us, even in our own identities. Vice President Harris represents a changing country with nearly 33 million biracial Americans. The nefarious nature of Trump’s slur is rooted in two assumptions: first, Americans don’t understand what being biracial means. Second, that Vice President Harris identifies in different ways for political gain – so now, Trump is attempting to pit two communities against each other.
But the real issue here is that Trump cannot comprehend that a biracial woman of Indian and African descent has had such a successful and celebrated professional journey – one that, in most ways, is far more impressive than his own. Trump cannot process the Vice President’s story of coming from a home with immigrant parents from two different countries and then rising to California State Attorney General, then the U.S. Senator of the world’s fifth largest economy, then the Vice President of a highly successful administration, and now possibly may beat him to become President of the United States.
Trump’s worldview is one where non-white Americans somehow exist in a different space that is not meritocratic – and trust me, this hasn’t escaped the notice among tens of millions of Americans who identify as non-white.
As one of the few Indian American strategists in the Democratic Party, I have felt it deeply. It’s not the first time that I’ve seen Republican – and even Democratic – leaders denigrate the accomplishments of people of color as undeserved.
But let’s be clear – this was an attempt to delegitimize her Americanness, in the same way that he did with President Obama a decade ago. It’s a sentiment many non-white Americans, immigrants and first generation Americans have experienced over the course of their lives, mine included. A formidable and shared experience that many of us have had, whether implicit or explicit. These attacks are not without consequences.
South Asian voters and Asian American and Pacific Island (AAPI) voters broadly are not monolithic groups. The same can be said for African American voters. But Harris’ background as an Indian American presents an opportunity to reshape the electorate in a tangible and potentially highly powerful way. She has the ability to demonstrate that hard work, discipline, kindness, appreciation for family, the pursuit of education are all not simply Indian American values or African American values – they are American values as a whole. She has the chance to mobilize entire communities of voters who are finally seeing themselves represented on a national political stage.
And it must be said: no coconut trees here, we know we “exist within a context” where Asian Americans have become a political force. The AAPI community contains a multitude of races, ethnicities, religions and languages, but their shared principles and growth among the electorate have made them a necessary part of any winning coalition today. In 2020, 72% of English-speaking Asian voters said they voted for Democrat Joe Biden for president, while 28% said they voted for Republican Donald Trump, a seven percent increase from the 2016 presidential election. In Georgia in 2020, where President Biden won by just 12,000 votes, AAPI voter turnout increased by a dramatic 63% (roughly 62,000 votes). In battleground states broadly, AAPI turnout increased by 357,969, 48% from 2016 to 2020. In Nevada, AAPI voters make up 11 percent share of the electorate and represent an estimated 209,384 eligible voters.
And looking to 2024, Harris has already shown that a proud Indian American who’s spoken openly about being raised by her Indian immigrant mother and has already begun to aggressively mobilize AAPI voters.
Let me be clear, however: the AAPI communities in this country will not – nor should they – just vote for Harris because she is Indian American. She will have to earn those votes like anyone else’s.
But she has an opportunity to show that voters have more in common than the divisions Trump sows. The campaign has changed with a new candidate, and, mark my words, the continued racialized attacks against the first African American and Indian American woman atop a presidential ticket is bound to backfire. Looking at the America we live in today, Donald Trump’s continued ignorance, intolerance, and hateful rhetoric will lead him right into a historic loss this November.
Atanu Chakravarty has been a Democratic strategist on some of the most high profile races in American politics for over a decade. He is a proud Indian American and Ohioan. He is a Vice President at Arc Initiatives, a Democratic strategy firm in Washington, D.C., where he runs the firm’s research arm.
