Posted on 09/23/2004 4:56:26 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
A whopping 71 percent of the Vietnamese-American community plans to vote for President Bush in the upcoming election, according to a recent national poll by the multi-ethnic news agency New California Media.
Dan Tran, a member of Vietnamese Americans Against John Kerry, isn’t surprised. Instead he anticipates an even higher percentage, predicting Vietnamese will virtually vote unanimously for Bush.
“I think 90 percent of the Vietnamese in America will vote against Kerry,” he said.
Amid an already heated election littered with issues surrounding Iraq and the economy, in the eyes of some Vietnamese the sole factor determining their vote has been their resentment of presidential candidate John Kerry’s record with their homeland.
For anti-communist Vietnamese who fled the country, Kerry’s anti-Vietnam war stance and policies on current relations with Vietnam have only evoked anger.
This has fueling their hostility to his candidacy and helping to sway an overwhelming proportion of votes to Bush, leaving only 11 percent backing Kerry as indicated by the poll, conducted by national polling organization Bendixen Associates.
While the number of Vietnamese registered to vote in 2000 was near 325,000 according to U.S. Census reports, Sergio Bendixen, president of Bendixen Associates, said the number of Vietnamese registered voters now could be as high as 600,000.
“So their vote will be a little less than 1 percent (of the total registered voters). If you were to look at the 18 battleground states, at most there will be 100,000 Vietnamese votes in those states,” Bendixen said.
With the number of Vietnamese voters growing, Vietnamese opponents of Kerry hope their community’s support for Bush will deny Kerry his shot at the White House.
LSA senior Mary Tran, who is not related to Dan Tran, says this strident opposition toward Kerry is evident in her father.
“My dad is voting for Bush because of Kerry’s Vietnam record and what he did in the past,” she said.
Citing Kerry’s protests against the Vietnam War and his later attempts to normalize relations with Vietnam during 1995, Mary Tran said her father believes Kerry only aided what he sees as the brutal dictatorship governing Vietnam today.
Kerry’s past does not merely reflect on Vietnam, but also his inability to lead the United States, said Dan Tran.
“Kerry joined the Vietnam War and then he opposed it. That’s his ‘flip-flopping’,” Dan Tran said, who is also president of the Vietnam Human Rights Project. “He then misled America about the Vietnam War, when he testified in court against U.S. soldiers,” said Dan Tran, adding that the United States could have won the war.
Most recently, Kerry blocked a bill that would have reduced U.S. aid to Vietnam in order to pressure the country to end its human rights abuses. Kerry’s opposition to the bill further deepened the divide between Vietnamese and his candidacy, Dan Tran added.
Not all Vietnamese communities plan to vote against Kerry. Engineering freshman Quang Nguyen also said his Florida Vietnam community would probably vote for Kerry, believing that even with his Vietnam war record, Kerry is still the superior candidate. “I feel that he is the person who would most stand up for more immigration from Vietnam in America,” he added.
But the rationale behind most Vietnamese backing President Bush has not solely been weighed on Kerry’s wartime record. In fact, support for the Republicans has its origins since Vietnam refugees immigrated to America during the Vietnam War.
Andrew Lam, an NCM translator who helped conduct the poll, said a key reason for Vietnamese support of Bush is because many of them were born in Vietnam.
“I think part of it is 80 percent of the population are immigrants from overseas. And many of them still remember the Vietnam War and still perceive a strong foreign policy as a way of keeping the world stable,” he said.
As most Vietnamese Americans were from South Vietnam, Lam said many are anti-communists and believe the Republicans are extremely anti-communist.
In turn, Lam added, it’s expected for them to oppose Kerry because of his anti-war attitude during the Vietnam War.
“(Vietnamese immigrants) were basically the losers of the war. They believe that the war protesters in America caused the U.S. to withdraw and lose the war.”
In recent years, polls have also showed Vietnamese consistently voting conservative, Bendixen said. “They are very conservative in the war of Iraq. On issues like gay marriage they have been very strong (conservative voters). The issue of 9/11, they were very patriotic. So they tend to feel best represented by Republicans.”
Yet while Vietnamese have voted conservative in the past, the direction of elections to come is uncertain since the next generation of Vietnamese may begin to alter that path.
Along with the overwhelming Vietnamese vote, the poll also indicated that among Asian Americans aged 18 to 39, 51 percent will vote for Kerry versus 27 percent for Bush.
Lam said younger Vietnamese would most likely follow the same trend.
“They grew up in the U.S. so their concerns are very different. The younger generation in this election is facing a possible draft. They face the economy and the war. The issues are domestic,” he said.
But University students say the Vietnamese vote for both generations is not as clear-cut as the NCM poll shows.
Business School senior Teresa Nguyen said her family is likely to vote for Kerry.
“Looking at my parents’ community, it is mainly blue collar working class, rather than anything like the Republicans. So they have voted for Democrats in the past. I think they are also more concerned about current events,” she said.
As for Vietnamese students, many have yet to decide, feeling they have not looked into the election enough or they are unsatisfied with both candidates. Pharmacy senior Mandee Nguyen said, “I’ve heard stories on both sides. I’m not even sure if I want to vote, because I’m not happy with either candidate.”
Misleading headline.
Should read:
"Kerry's record influences Vietnamese Voters - 71% Back Bush"
The other 29% are NVA and VC.
The Vietnamese-Americans like the Vier Nam Veterans have verrrrrry long memories and we have not forgotten what the Traitor did in 1971. I was in Little Saigon a couple of weeks ago and the people there are voting for Bush. PERIOD!
Semper Fi,
Kelly
Very telling numbers.
We have a VERY large Vietnamese ex-pat community here in Louisville.
Always impressed me, by the closeness of the families; the tidiness of the neighborhoods; the entrepreneurship of the business people; and the heavy Catholic participation.
The industriousness of certain immigrant blocks, versus the race-baiting of others...
Most people who have escaped the grip of Communism realize how evil it is. Kerry is a commie apologist, and Vietnamese people know better.
Vietnamese = Florida Cubans
As I've posted before, wifey is Vietnamese, a U.S. citizen.
Not a single one of her friends will be voting for Kerry. The equate a vote for Kerry to supporting the "Viet Cong" (as they still call the Hanoi regime). Kerry's behavior is so bizarre vice Vietnam that many suspect he's on the Hanoi payroll (and his cousin's real estate deal with Hanoi somewhat confirms that).
The organization quoted above - NCM - has a web site and a survey from last year indicating 80 to 90 percent support for GWB, the WoT, and Iraq. Only the Filipinos exceed the Vietnamese in their support for GWB among all polled ethnic groups (Arabs are down there in the 30's).
Kerry, who has portrayed himself as a friend of the Vietnamese people is actually disliked by the South Vietnamese now in America. Obviously the Hanoi Vietnamese like him, his picture is in the War Remnants Museum in Saigon (formerly called the Museum Of American War Crimes).
Oh, did you know that Kerry learned to speak Vietnamese during his 3 1/2 month tour? He must be a linguistic prodigy, most of us require years to get a grip on the six basic tones of Vietnamese.
I had not seen that before, about your good lady. I can relate.
My grandparents came here to escape the Bolsheviks. And I had relatives who got free tatoos at Buchenwald.
It's such bravery, to flee your home and come to a place which promises hope. I don't believe the vast masses in America could do it, if it happened here.
That 71% fear re-education camps if Komrade Kerry is elected.
We already have them, they are called sensitivity training. Kerry would only make this a mandatory part of our "education".
"I don't think I am being overly optimistic but I think that this election will not be close by a long shot..."
I think you are overly optimistic because more Democrats will turn out to vote on November 3, 2004.
Imagine if all of us here, 30 years ago, had escaped the United States to a safe country, such as Australia or the UK, because the US had been overcome by COMMUNISM.
Imagine if many of us had family still left here, under the Red Star, or we had seen a brother or sister drown as we had left the US by ship.
Fast forward 30 years. As residents of the UK, there is a parliamentary election for Prime Minister. One of the two candidates had, 30 years ago, facilitated the Communist takeover of the US, and had even visited Communist leaders in Paris to strategize.
We as voters in the UK poll, would be expected to vote for THAT BUZZARD? No way.
I thank God that my wife was arrested trying to escape from Vietnam via the Ca Mau peninsula in 1980.
Why?
Many of the "boat people" were attacked in the Sea Of Siam by Thai pirates, taken hostage, raped, robbed, beaten, murdered. Especially those who left from Ca Mau. And that's if the boat didn't disintegrate before reaching land or a friendly commercial vessel. Even if they made it out, they were typically kept in refugee camps for 3 to 5 years and more (Hong Kong repatriated several hundred back to Vietnam as recently as three years ago).
Americans generally cannot conceive of the horrors that Vietnamese refugees endured in order to get out of the "communist paradise."
As for my wife, she and her 100+ shipmates got 30 days in a filthy Ca Mau jail. Since she provided a fake name, there were no repercussions and obviously she left after we were married.
The article above is only the *second* I've seen this election cycle about Vietnamese-Americans and how they view John Kerry. There's something odd in that.
And actually it's far worse than described above: in the weekly V-A newspapers, Kerry's regulary called a "phan boi" - traitor - on the front pages and in editorials. He's greatly despised and considered a co-conspirator with Hanoi.
I wish more Americans knew about this.
It's out there, but maybe the SWIFTees could get some Vietnamese Vietnam vets to talk about their feelings toward Phan Boi Kerry.
Leave it to the arrogant Kerry to totally overlook this reality.
The Swiftee ads are killing the Traitor!
They are far more successful than W's ads.
By November second, the Traitor will rue the day he ever slandered the reputations of millions of Viet Nam veterans.
Semper Fi,
Kelly
BTTT
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