Former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard now a Fox News pundit

ABC

Former Hawaii Congressmember Tulsi Gabbard is making new friends on the right.

The transformation of Tulsi Gabbard, from a former rising star in the Democratic Party and Bernie Sanders acolyte to spokesperson for the extreme right, is almost complete after signing a deal with Fox News. All that's left is for her to declare an intention to run for President as a Republican.

The Samoan American, who ran for President under the Democratic banner in 2020, signed a deal with Fox News to become a contributor on the Rupert Murdoch network.

A spokesperson for Fox confirmed Gabbard’s hiring on Tuesday, Nov. 15,

Gabbard has emerged as a leading critic of liberals since, campaigning with a number of Trump-backed Republicans during the recent midterm elections cycle.

Last month, she announced that she was leaving the Democratic Party.

"I can no longer remain in today's Democratic party," she said on her podcast. "It's now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers, driven by cowardly wokeness..."

Gabbard accused the Democrats of "stoking anti-white racism," being contemptuous toward religion and police and driving the country closer to nuclear war.

In 2012, Gabbard became the first Hindu elected to Congress. She joined then-Rep. Tammy Duckworth as the only two women combat veterans in Congress.

She began building a national profile during the 2016 election, when she demonstrated her independent spirit when she resigned from her post as vice chairperson of the Democratic National Committee to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders for president.

In 2020, she decided to run to be the Presidential nominee for the Democrats, abandoning a re-election campaign for her House seat. She left the Presidential campaign in March 2020 and endorsed Joe Biden.

During the midterm campaigns, she endorsed and campaigned for several Republican candidates, including election denier Arizona's gubernatorial candidate Keri Lake.

Even before she left the Democrats, Gabbard has made regular appearances on the Fox network over the last several months and on Monday served as a guest host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” the channel’s top-rated prime-time program.

Her name has even popped up from GOP insiders as a possible candidate for President or Vice President for the Republican Party, even though she has not yet officially joined the GOP. 

Like Donald Trump, she has expressed her admiration for Russia's Vladimir Putin and appears to support Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which aligns with some Republicans' wish to reduce funding and weapon sales to Ukraine.

As if the prove her departure from the Democrats was genuine, Gabbard went on to endorse and campaign for 13 Republicans for the Midterms. Ten of them lost.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow @DioknoEd on Twitter.

Ex-Hawaii Congress Representative Tulsi Gabbard leaves the Democrats

Former Congressmember Tulsi Gabbard launches a new podcast.

To no one's surprise, Tulsi Gabbard made it official Tuesday when she announced that she is leaving the Democratic Party.

The former Congressional Representative from Hawaii has announced that she is leaving the Democrats, calling it an “elitist cabal of warmongers”, and inviting her “common sense independent minded” Democrats to join her. Despite leaving the party, she left her future political affiliation up in the air.

Gabbard, who ran for United States President in 2019, said in a video published on Twitter on Tuesday said that the Democratic Party is driven by “cowardly wokeness.”

A frequent critic of the Biden administration, Gabbard's announcement was not a complete surprise. Since Biden took office, the Samoan American's criticism more and more began to echo the rhetoric coming from the conservative extremists who have taken over the GOP.

Gabbard's tweet said: "I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms, are hostile to people of faith & spirituality, demonize the police & protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans, believe in open borders, weaponize the national security state to go after political opponents, and above all, dragging us ever closer to nuclear war."

Gabbard’s announcement comes as she also kicks off a new podcast this week, “The Tulsi Gabbard Show.”

Once seen as a rising political star, Gabbard has gained a reputation as a wild card within Democratic circles, often questioning Democratic positions. She also faced criticisms earlier this year from local Democrats who voted to condemn her “for participating in an event that raised funds that will harm Democrats across the country” after she spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow @DioknoEd on Twitter.

Record number of AAPI candidates running for state legislatures

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The Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus of Calif. is made up Assembly and Senate members.

This blog has written extensively on the efforts of AAPI candidates running for Congress and -- of course -- the historic bid of Democratic Vice President nominee Kamala Harris. 

There is another political wave generated by AAPIs that is occurring almost unnoticed by media focusing on the big, national picture: A record number of AAPI candidates are running for state legislatures.

The heightened interest in running for office could perhaps be attributed by the highly visible Democratic presidential primary that featured three AAPI candidates, Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang and Harris. For whatever reason, there is a record number of AAPI candidates running for state legislature seats across the country this year whose candidacies should be noted. AAPI Data points out that 158 Asian Americans are running for state legislatures, an increase of 21 Asian American state legislature candidates since the 2018 midterms.

Local political races, from city councils and school boards to state legislatures is where the next generation of politicians will learn the ins-and-outs of politicking and hone their political muscles for the next level of law making.

Out of the 158 candidates, 75% (117) are Democrats and 25% (39) are Republicans, a reflection of a national trend moving the AAPI political views to left of center, according to AAPI Data. 

The Republican candidates are not necessarily concentrated in red states; many Asian Americans, such as June Yang Cutter and current State Senator Ling Ling Chang, are running for state legislatures in Democratic states like California.

The non-partisan data collection initiative, AAPI Data, reports that Chinese and Japanese Americans make up the largest portion of the state candidates: 42 are Chinese and 36 are Japanese. Perhaps because they have been at this political game longer and better established in their respective communities, East Asians -- which includes Chinese and Korean Americans -- are only about one third of the Asian American population, they nevertheless make up about 61% of the Asian American state legislature candidates. 

South Asians show the biggest increase in political involvement compared to 2018, according to AAPI Data. South Asians -- mostly descended from India and Pakistan -- make up and 23% this year as are South Asian, compared to 14% in the 2018 midterms. These changes may be reflective of changes in the overall Asian American population, as South Asians continue to be a growing share of all Asian Americans.

At the state level are Southeast Asian -- primarily from Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Malaysia and the Philippines -- make up 22% of this year's state-level candidates.

Diving down deeper, AAPI Data finds that about 60% of the 158 Asian American state legislature candidates are running for re-election. In addition, about 60% of the candidates are men and 40% are women. Out of the 95 incumbents, 63 are men and 32 are women, while 33 of those who are either challengers or pursuing open seats are men and 30 are women. 

Most are from Hawaii and California where the largest AAPI populations live. About 66% of Hawaii's voters are AAPI while they make up about 16% of Caliofrnia's total electorate.

What AAPI Data's analysis finds is that many are also running for state legislatures in all the regions of the United States, including the South and the Midwest. According to it's analysis, there are Asian Americans running for state legislatures in 30 states.

What we also learned from AAPI Data's newest findings is that a purt of nonpoliticians are making the leap from the sidelines into the field, despite the negative image emanating coming from the White House.  The candidates for state legislatures also come from diverse occupational backgrounds: teachers, small business owners, community orgnanizers to healthcare professionals. 

For example, service industry worker Francesca Hong is running for the Wisconsin State Assembly in District 76, marketing professional Emily Weber is running for Missouri House of Representatives in District 24, and anesthesiologist Michelle Au is running for Georgia State Senate in District 48. 

Perhaps more than any other ethnic group, Asians and Asian Americans are perceived as perpetual foreigners by mainstream culture. One way of ridding ourselves of that harmful image is to make ourselves more visible through the soft power of the movies, TV and other entertainment venues and extend our presence as well in the corporate board rooms, classrooms, courtrooms and lawmaking chambers. As AAPI candidates run for office, from water district boards, city council and county boards, they are interweaving their unique experiences and cultures into the fabric of America.

EDITOR'S NOTE: A word of caution, this is news sprinkled with opinion. Readers are encouraged to seek multiple news sources to formulate their own positions.

Tulsi Gabbard suspends her campaign for President

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Tulsi Gabbard ends her campaign for President by endorsing Joe Biden

What is most surprising is how long Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, was able to campaign while other, better known and better funded rivals folded earlier.

Gabbard suspended her campaign for president Thursday.and surprisingly endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden for President. It was expected that Gabbard who throw her support to Bernie Sanders, who she backed in 2016. 

"It's clear that Democratic primary voters have chosen, Vice President Joe Biden, to be the person who will take on President Trump in the general election," she said on a Twitter video.  

"Although I may not agree with the Vice President on every issue, I know that he has a good heart and is motivated by his love for our country and the American people," seh continued. "I'm confident that he will lead our country guided by the spirit of aloha — respect and compassion — and thus help heal the divisiveness that has been tearing our country apart.

Gabbard, 38, announced her White House bid in January of last year and immediately made history as the first Samoan American, first Hindu American and the first female combat veteran to run for president.

Her departure leave only Biden and Sanders working for the Democratic nomination, two of the oldest candidates out of a field of 24 and one of the most diverse field of candidates put up by any US political party.

Gabbard was also one of three Asian American & Pacific Islander candidates to campaign for President at the same time. She joined California Sen. Kamala Harris and entrepreneur Andrew Yang in the historic primary campaign trail.

In addition, with Harris, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, to become part of most women candidates to run for president.

In her announcement on Thursday, she noted she would continue her military service in the Hawaii National Guard.

She has seven months left in her last term in the House of Representatives. Earlier, she had announced that she would not run for her Congressional District 2 seat.

Gabbard's best moment during the primary campaigning was in the second debate when she basically eviscerated Harris' record as California's Attorney General and San Francisco's District Attorney, wounding Harris' campaign that the California senator was never able to recover from.

During the campaign she touted her foreign policy credentials as a military veteran, called for bringing the troops home from the Middle East and ending the United States' "regime-change" wars.

When she first ran for Congress in 2012, she was dubbed a "rising star" in the Democratic Party, received the endorsement of then-President Obama. 

Speculation then was that she would be a a good Presidential candidate in 2020 and was given a vice chairman position in the DNC, to boost her name recognition and give her more status within the party in preparation for a possible run for President.

Then came a series of political miscues that placed her as a Democratic outsider. The first was when she quit her DNC position in order to campaign for Bernie Sanders against Party favorite Hillary Clinton, a spat that continued into the 2019-2020 Presidential campaign when Clinton inferred that the Russians might be favoring Gabbard in order to have her run as a third-party candidate lessening the chances of a Democratic candidate.

Through her connections with the Hindu American community who gave her substantial financial support, she appears to support  Prime Minister Modi, whose conservative -- some say fascist -- policies run counter to the Democrats' more liberal and moderate wing.

Then, in December of last year,  her impeachment vote was a head-scratcher. Gabbard was the only Democrat to vote "present" while the rest of her party peers voted to impeach Trump.

Her endorsement Thursday of moderate Biden instead of the progressives' favorite Sanders might be an attempt to put herself in the Democrats' good graces for her political future. A run for Hawaii's Governorship or a campaign for Hawaii's other House seat against first-termer Ed Case is not out of the question.

Analysis: Who do California's Asian Amerian voters support?

Super Tuesday is upon us and Asian American voters are ready to cast their ballots. There are over 4 million eligible AAPI voters in the Golden State, which has 415 delegates up for grabs.

The Democratic field of candidates has narrowed dramatically after the South Carolina primary. With Joe Biden's overwhelming victory in South Carolina, Tom Steyer, Pete Buttigeig and Amy Klobuchar have dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination to run against Donald Trump.

Fivethirtyeight.com says, "In California, which votes on Super Tuesday, Asian Americans make up 16 percent of the population, the largest percentage of any state except Hawaii. The state’s Asian American voters account for 12 percent of likely voters who are registered Democrats, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, which released a study of California voters last August. And that same research showed that 36 percent of Asian American likely voters in California are independents, compared to 43 percent who are Democrats, which means that if independents choose to cast a Democratic ballot, Asian Americans’ share of the primary electorate could be even higher."

The latest polls taken before the South Carolina primary shows Sanders favored in California, but momentum is in Biden's favor after his big win in South Carolina, drawing the overwhelming support of African Americans and moderate white voters.

Heading into Super Tuesday (but, before South Carolina), fivethirtyeight.com has four recent California polls with crosstab information on who Asian American voters are leaning toward voting for, and Sanders seems to have an edge, earning the most support in three of the four surveys the website looked at. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg also did well across the board.

“I’m not sure how much that matters,” says Rep. Ro Khanna, the Indian American congressmember representing Silicon Valley, and Sanders' campaign co-chair. He adds, “I mean, (Biden’s) a formidable competitor, we’re treating him as such and we’re very confident we’re going to do well in a lot of Super Tuesday states. We think this is going to be a fight until the convention."

The chart below provided by fivethirtyeight was compiled before the outcome of the South Carolina Primary.

Sanders, whose campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, is Muslim American, was one of two Democratic candidates to attend the Islamic Society of North America’s annual conference in Houston over Labor Day weekend last year, an event that drew some 30,000 Muslims from all over the country.

Sanders has received endorsements from prominent Muslim American figures: Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, the first Muslim American women elected to Congress; and even millennial influencers like Hoda Katebi, a popular fashion writer, cultural critic, and political activist. A few weeks before Super Tuesday, Emgage PAC, which calls itself the biggest Muslim political action committee in the country, endorsed Sanders as well, according to Politico.

Biden, for his part, appears ready to give Sanders the Golden State and instead is focusing on states with large African American populations -- Virginia, Alabama, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas. The Biden campaign has spent zero dollars on California TV ads, and a teeny, tiny, almost negligible amount ($4,000) on digital.

Biden also received and early endorsement of the AAPI Victory Fund, one of the more active AAPI political action committees.

One of the most visible Asian American surrogates for Biden is Olympic skater Michelle Kwan, a native Californian, but she has been absent from the Golden State in the runup to Super Tuesday.

Warren and her campaign manager Roger Lau first began talking about the importance of AAPI representation in government back when he was tapped for Warren’s Massachusett's senatorial campaign in 2011. They have been very deliberate in including more than 100 AAPI staffers throughout the campaign, including Mary Lou Akai-Ferguson, the national AAPI community engagement and organizing director for Warren for President who has led the campaign’s grassroots outreach efforts.

However the Warren campaign compiled an impressive list of AAPI celebrities and community leaders endorsing the Massachusetts senator, including such luminaries such as actress Constance Wu, authors Celeste Ng and Gina Apostol, CNN pundit Jeff Yang, former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao and prominent psychology professor Kevin Nadal. 

Warren "has called for more support for legal immigration, including redistributing unused visas to address the millions of backlogged individuals currently waiting for a way to enter the United States, as well as lower barriers to naturalization for green card holders — over a third of whom are Asian, who make up the largest group of naturalized citizens in the United States. She has declared that she will not just extend DACA, but provide a path to citizenship for DREAMers — and their families; about one in 10 DACA-eligible individuals in the U.S. are Asian,” the group noted.

To counter this list, the Sanders campaign compiled their own list of endorsements from prominent AAPI celebrities and leaders.

Is it Tulsi Gabbard's last hurrah?

Notice that Hawaii's Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is not even included in fivethirtyeight's calculations because she has done so poorly in the four early primaries and caucuses. 

In California, a candidate must win 15% of the votes in order to earn any of the delegates. It is unlikely that Gabbard will reach that threshold except for her appeal for the state's large Hawaiian, Samoan American and Hindu American subgroups.

Another candidate that shouldn't be discounted is former NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has spend a fortune in television, print and online advertising in California and Texas and other Super Tuesday states. It has been his campaign's strategy from the moment he announced his candidacy to ignore the first four contests and concentrate his considerable treasure chest on Super Tuesday. We'll see if this unusual strategy works for the billionaire.

With Californians Sen. Kamala Harris and tech billionaire Tom Steyer out of the race, along with Asian American Andrew Yang, the state's AAPI voters may go with the candidate who has put the most effort in winning their vote -- respect and reverence being important in most AAPI cultures. That would be Sen. Warren, who like Sanders propose a progressive agenda but hasn't been as strident nor did she have the well-established organization that Sanders never disbanded after his 2016 run against Hillary Clinton.

The big question is with moderates Steyer, Buttigeig and Klobuchar out of the race, where will their supporters go? And for the voters who opted to cast their votes early, if they didn't vote for the remaining candidates, their votes will amount to zero.

Will Michael Bloomberg's advertising campaign work?

“We are fighting this delegate by delegate,” said Roger Lau, Elizabeth Warren's campaign manager and the first AAPI to head a national political campaign. Although only has won eight delegates after South Carolina's Primary Saturday. Warren has a record of being able to win even in races where she initially trailed, Roger Lau adds. “I’m confident that we’re going to continue fighting all the way through until the convention.”


Two weeks ago, Warren put forth her “Working Agenda for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders,” and like Sanders, has invested heavily in multi-lingual campaign materials.


Besides, California and Texas, the other states voting Tuesday include Warren's home state of Massachusetts, Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, American Samoa, and Sander's home state of Vermont. Altogether these states and territory represent a third of the total Democratic delegates.

AAPI voters could play key roles in Texas where several AAPI candidates -- Filipino American Gina Ortiz Jones in the 23rd and Indian American Sri Preston Kulkarni in the 22nd -- running for Congress could spur  more AAPI voters to show up at the polls. The largest AAPI ethnic groups in Texas include: Indian (340,000), Vietnamese (258,000), Chinese (211,000), Filipino (170,000), Korean (101,000), and Pakistani (66,000), according to AAPI Data. AAPI voters make up about 5% of the electorate.

In Texas, Asian Americans are the fastest-growing demographic, according to the US Census. The Asian American community has grown by 42% since 2010. Evidence of the growing presence of AAPI communities -- every major city in Texas now hosts Lunar New Year celebrations and the "Howdy Modi" rally welcoming India's Prime MInister last year drew 50,000 Indian Americans to Houston.

In a Public Policy Polling survey of likely Texas Democratic primary voters released this week, 32% of Asian Americans supported Sanders, 29% supported Bloomberg, 20% supported Buttigieg and 9% supported Biden. But this poll was also taken before Biden's convincing win in South Carolina and before Buttigieg dropped out. 

On Sunday, both Buttigieg and Klobuchar gave ringing endorsements to Biden. We can assume that many of Buttigieg's and Klobuchar's moderate supporters in Texas and California would switch their preference to Biden or Bloomberg.

The Hmong American community, which has been politically active in Minnesota in the Twin Cities region and supporters of Minnesota Sen. Klobuchar, will likely take her endorsement seriously and vote for the moderate Biden.

Other states where AAPI could make a difference include Virginia and Colorado, representing 5.3% and 3% of the voters, respectively, according to AAPI Data.

Super Tuesday could be the make-or-break moment for several of the candidates and the moment the AAPI voters could help determine the outcome of the Democratic race for President.

Updated March 3, 9:30 a.m. for clarity.

2019 Review: AAPI political visibility significantly increased

CAPAC

The Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus inducted a record number of members.

In the area of politics AAPI stepped into the big stage in a big way in 2019. For the first time in US history, three AAPI candidates threw their hats in the three ring circus known as the race for president. 

Businessman Andrew Yang, was the first to declare his intention in 2018 and with no name recogntion, he has doggedly persisted against all addCalifornia Sen. Kamala Harris declared her candidacy with an impressive Oakland rally with 20,000 of her closest friends. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii joined the largest field of Democratic candidates. By mid-year there were 24 Democrats vying for the partyi's nomination.

Harris, undoubtedly the strongest candidate of the three, surprised almost everyone by being the first to withdraw after Thanksgiving. Yang continues to gain steam while Gabbard is hanging in there.

In addition to the three presidential candidates, three more Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders were sworn into office in January. Andy Kim became the first AAPI congressman to represent New Jersey; TJ Cox eked out a victory in California to become only the second member of Congress with Filipino heritage; and Michael San Nicolas, represented Guam. With the three new congressmembers, the number of AAPI representatives rose to the most ever at 18.

AAPI lawmakers, all of them Democrats, were in the forefront in opposing Trumps racist and restrictive immigration policies, the citizenship question in the 2020 Census and the rise of hate and white supremacists and the GOPs attempts to dismantle the Obama healthcare program They also supported strengthening voting rights, disaggregating data and DACA.

AAPI voters helped turn long-time GOP districts into Democratic districts in 2018 and continued their political activity with voter registration drives for the 2020 elections and demanded the Republicans and Democrats address their issues at the federal, state and local levels.

2019 REVIEW

Part 2: Affirmative action debate exposes schism in Asian American community

Part 3: Trump immigration policies shake up, wake up AAPI communities
Part 4: Hollywood 'discovers Asians

Andrew Yang's favoribility ratings move him ahead of Buttigieg

The latest poll numbers after the Dec. 18 debate among the top seven Democratic candidates running for president shows that Andrew Yang has edged ahead of South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

According to the Morning Consult survey released  late Monday (Dec. 23), Yang's favorability rose 7 percentage points among likely Democratic primary or caucus voters compared to a pre-debate poll conducted Dec. 9-15, with 47 percent expressing favorable views and 13 percent expressing unfavorable views.

That would put the tech businessman into fourth place, a few points above Buttigieg, who has benefitted from a ton of free mainstream media coverage.

In contrast, Yang, who has always had the tagline "long-shot" attached to his name, has struggled n getting equal coverage. In the beginning, it was difficult for his quest to be taken seriously by mainstream media. His campaign has called out MSNBC for leaving him out of their charts and even misidentifying him in one broadcast. The most egregious example of media bias, according Yang's supporters, called the Yang Gang, is that their candidate has received the least amount of air time in the June and November debates when MSNBC moderated

However, in the most recent debate in Los Angeles hosted by Politico and PBS, Yang still came out with shortest amount of speaking time compared to the other six candidates onstage.

The survey showed that the lower tier candidates of Yang, Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer gained support. Their gains apparently came from Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, both of whom poll numbers declined. Former Vice President Joe Biden  stayed steady.

According to the poll, the only other AAPI candidate, Hawaii's Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has suffered the most since she voted "present" -- neither yes or no -- on the important vote on impeachment of Donald Trump. According to Morning Consult, Gabbard dropped 11 points after that vote, the only abstention among all House members.

"With an unfavorable rating of 30 percent and 18 percent expressing positive views of her, Gabbard is clearly the most-disliked candidate in the field," reports Newweek.

Former Hawaii governor asks Gabbard to resign

TULSI 2020

Tulsi Gabbard campaigned in New Hampshire while the top Democrats debated in Los Angeles.

While she continues her campaign for the Democratic nomination for POTUS, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is being asked to resign her Congressional seat. 2020

Gabbard, who is not running for reelection, is being asked by former Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie, who held the governorship from 2010 to 2014, to resign so the state can hold a special election to replace her.

As she campaigns for president, Gabbard has been largely absent from Congress, said Abercrombie in a news conference.

Abercrombie was a former member of Congress who resigned his seat when he ran for governor, so he speaks from experience.

“Trying to do my job in Washington and run for office, another office, in Hawaii was just too difficult. I couldn’t do it,” he said. “I had hoped maybe I could do it, and it became obvious that I couldn’t. So I resigned my seat.”

Abercrombie serves as co-chair of state Sen. Kai Kahele’s congressional campaign to succeed Gabbard. 

“Hawaiʻi is Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard’s home and her heart,” said T. Ilihia Gionson, Gabbard’s Hawaii communications director. “Her pursuit of the highest office in the land has not compromised her and her team’s commitment to serving the people of Hawaiʻi in her fourth term in Congress.”

"A whole lot of things are going to be going on and happening here and in Washington over the next year and to essentially deprive half the state of Hawaii of representation in that sense is unacceptable," Abercrombie told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser

Tulsi Gabbard all by herself in her surprise vote on impeachment

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All the AAPI members of the House of Representatives voted for the impeachment of Donald Trump except for one -- Hawaii's Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.
“I could not in good conscience vote against impeachment because I believe President Trump is guilty of wrongdoing,” she said. in a statement. “I also could not in good conscience vote for impeachment because removal of a sitting President must not be the culmination of a partisan process, fueled by tribal animosities that have so gravely divided our country.”

Instead, Gabbard opted to vote "present," which basically is the same as "abstain." She was the lone House member of take no position in the historic vote.

"I come before you to make a stand for the center, to appeal to all of you to bridge our differences and stand up for the American people,” Gabbard's statement continued. “My vote today is a vote for much needed reconciliation and hope that together we can heal our country."

All the other AAPI members of the House joined other Democrats to vote on "yes" on both articles of impeachment. The final vote was 230-197 mostly along party lines for "abuse of power," 229-198 for "obstruction." Gabbard, who as a maverick Democrat is a long-shot candidate for the party's nomination for POTUS, was the only House member to take no position on both articles. Going against her party will likely not please the Democrats.

Earlier, Gabbard failed to get support when she introduced an amendment to censure Trump, basically a slap on the wrist for what most historicans have called the most serious charges for impeachment ever.

By breaking away from her party, Gabbard won't win her friends among Democrats but it might make some Republicans consider her independence as a plus giving fuel to Hillary Clinton's earlier claim that the GOP was setting up one of the Democratic candidates to make a third-party run for the presidency, an accusation that Gabbard has denied.

Tulsi Gabbard's "present' vote won't win her any friends among Democrats.

The vote was the culmination of an investigation of Trump's call with the Ukrainian president and appeared to condition US military aide to an investigation of alleged corruption involving Hunter Biden, son of former Vice President Joe Biden.

“To turn a blind eye to the President openly courting foreign interference in our elections would set a dangerous precedent that any President can use the power of the office for personal gain," said Rep. Judy Chu prior to the vote. "This was what the Founders feared, which is why Congress was established as a check and overseer, and why impeachment was included as a measure of recourse for a President who flaunts our laws and the Constitution. 

"And unfortunately, due to the President’s flagrant behavior and concerted effort to obstruct any and all legal investigations, impeachment was the only option left to us. My vote today for impeachment is a vote to defend our democracy and our elections from any interference, foreign or domestic,” said Chu, chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus.

Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., a few days removed from a heart procedure, delivered a passionate argument for impeaching Trump.

“No one in America could do what Donald Trump did and get away with it,” Lieu said before he cast his vote. “No American elected official can call up a foreign government and ask for an investigation of a political opponent. No member of Congress can call up a foreign official and ask for help in a reelection campaign. If we did that, we would likely get indicted.”

Rep. Bobby Scott, D-VA, who is part Filipino said during the debate, "The delicate balance of power that underpins our democracy is threatened when a President disregards the Constitution by obstructing Congress to cover up illegal behavior. In doing that, President Trump violated his oath. Today, we must put country over party. Conscience over complicity. Today, we must put country over party. Conscience over complicity. Today, we must assert that no one is above the law. Today, we are summoned by history to do the right thing."

"This is a day of accountability and defending our democracy," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-WA. "The facts in front of us are clear.

"In fact, on those two calls with (Ukrainian) President [Volodymyr] Zelensky, he never mentioned the word 'corruption'," Jayapal said. "He solicited foreign interference before, he is doing it now, and he will do it again. The president is the smoking gun."

As the House vote was announced to impeach Trump, the Democrats began to cheer but with one swift siwpe of her hand, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi silenced her party. She did not want a celebration.

“The House has acted on a very sad day to protect the Constitution of the United States,” she said, calling the vote “appropriate and urgent.”

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Tulsi Gabbard will skip the next Democratic debate even if she qualifies

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Tulsi Gabbard criticizes the Democratic Party's criteria for the debates.

Even if Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-HI, gets the one more poll she needs to qualify for the December Democratic debate, she says she won't take part.

"For a number of reasons, I have decided not to attend the December 19th "debate" — regardless of whether or not there are qualifying polls," Gabbard tweeted. "I instead choose to spend that precious time directly meeting with and hearing from the people of New Hampshire and South Carolina."

She has been critical of the criteria put up by the Democratic National Committee that the candidates have to meet in order to participate in the series of debates. The debate on Dec. 19 will be the sixth time the qualifiers meet on stage.

So far, former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.; and tech billionaire Tom Steyer have qualified for the next debate. The rest of the large field is left out in the cold.

“There’s been a lack of transparency in that whole process about which polls are selected, which aren’t, which they’re seeing as qualifying, which ones are actually polling,” Gabbard told Hill.TV as she struggled to meet the criteria in an earlier debate.

“Spending time with voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, they don’t take kindly to seeing how a few people in Washington, D.C. at the DNC are trying to be the gatekeepers,” she said.

She wasn't the only candidate questioning the hurdles set by the Democrats.

Sen. Cory Booker rebuked the DNC for letting “elites” and “money” decide which candidates gain the opportunity to occupy the debate stage. 

"I'm a little upset with the (Democratic National Committee) right now because they seem to be trying to make the decisions for you," Booker told a Sunday crowd gathered in a Dubuque bar.

Booker also made note that the New Hampshire Democratic Party voted last weekend to send the DNC a letter urging the party to reconsider the qualifying criteria for the debate to ensure greater diversity and give voters "the greatest opportunity" to hear from the candidates.

The fact that the candidates who have qualified for the December debate are all white sharpened the flaws of the DNC's attempt to winnow down the crowd of candidates that at one point numbered 24.

Booker, who is one of two African Americans running for president, pointed out that there are now more billionaires among the candidates than there are African Americans, after Sen. Kamala Harris, D-CA, dropped out of the race.

Booker and Gabbard, who is Samoan American, and the other candidates of color, Julian Castro and Andrew Yang have also not met the DNC criteria. Yang needs one more poll where he has garners 4% to qualify.

DNC spokesperson Xochitl Hinojosa told the Washington Times that the party’s debate requirements were “inclusive." 

She asserted that historically, candidates who have polled lower than 4% in the primary season have never been selected as the Democratic presidential nominee. “While we are legally required to have objective criteria for each debate, our qualifying criteria has stayed extremely low throughout this entire process,” she said in an emailed statement. “We’ve never seen a political party take this many steps to be inclusive.”

However, "historically," there have never been this many candidates running for president, which greatly dissipates potential supporters and donors among the diverse presidential hopefuls representing a wide political spectrum.

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Kamala Harris drops out of the Presidential race; tells Trump, 'I'll se you at your trial'

SCREEN CAPTURE / CNN

Senator Kamala Harris' popularity began dropping after the July debate.

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Sen. Kamala Harris today became the first major contender to drop out of the 2020 Presidential race.

Harris who launched her campaign with 20,000 supporters in Oakland and followed with a  a strong performance in a debate in June. After a so-so performance in a July debate, her poll numbers have steadily fallen.

She struggled to find a niche in the campaign. She’s right of progressives Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, but left of moderate Joe Biden. With so many candidates, many of her would-be supporters were siphoned off by other candidates.

In an email to her supporters obtained by The Guardian, Harris wrote:

Eleven months ago at the launch of our campaign in Oakland I told you all: ‘I am not perfect. But I will always speak with decency and moral clarity and treat all people with dignity and respect. I will lead with integrity. I will speak the truth.’

And that’s what I have tried to do every day of this campaign. So here’s the truth today.

I’ve taken stock and looked at this from every angle, and over the last few days have come to one of the hardest decisions of my life.

My campaign for president simply doesn’t have the financial resources we need to continue.

I’m not a billionaire. I can’t fund my own campaign. And as the campaign has gone on, it’s become harder and harder to raise the money we need to compete.

In good faith, I can’t tell you, my supporters and volunteers, that I have a path forward if I don’t believe I do.

So, to you my supporters, it is with deep regret — but also with deep gratitude — that I am suspending my campaign today.

Harris’s campaign also struggled to gain traction in both the Black and Asian American communities despite her Jamaican and Indian American heritage. Blacks overwhelmingly support Joe Biden and Asian Americans have failed to gain enthusiasm for her in part because of the perception she has not embraced that side of her background. 

The senator was the first candidate to release a platform aimed directly at the AAPI communities laying out her goals and how she plans to accomplish them, from immigration reform benefitting family reunification to a promise to require federal agencies to disaggregate their data collection to benefit the subgroups within the broad umbrella of "Asian American & Pacific Islanders."

Recently she released a video with Mindy Kaling showing the two of them cooking up some masala dosas. The video went viral, especially among Asian Americans, but may have come too late in her campaign.

The announcement came a day after ia super PAC, People Standing Strong, was set to go on the air in Iowa starting Wednesday (Dec. 4). The $1 million ad campaign was cancelled.

Additionally, Harris' financially-strapped campaign hasn’t had any TV ads since September, and it stopped buying Facebook ads in the past two months.

By Tuesday afternoon, Harris released this video:

Donald Trump, who was impressed with the Oakland launch and had not come up with a derisive nickname for Harris as he has for Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, was quick to respond to Harris' announcement.

The high point in her campaign came right after the June debate when she attacked Biden's past support of segregationist senators against the bussing of school children to combat the racial segregation of schools. 

After the debate, she was polling nationally second to Biden and money was pouring in. 

In the July debate, she stumbled after being attacked by rival Rep. Tulsi Gabbard on Harris' record as a San Francisco DA and as California's Attorney General. She also failed to come up with a clear message on her healthcare plan, a complicated issue national media seems to return to again and again.

She never recovered from that poor performance. Harris numbers kept falling until she dropped into the single digits. As other candidates became known to the voters, Harris' early backers seemed to drift over to Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigeig.

The coup de gras may have come over the weekend when a key senior campaign aide resigned to join the campaign of billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Recent polls released this week showed the New York mayor, who had entered the race only two weeks ago, had jumped ahead of Harris.

A series of articles began appearing  in mainsream media saying that her campaign was in trouble. The articles pointed out the release of most of her campaign staff, dropping out of the New Hampshire primary and placing all her cards on the Iowa Caucuses.

In the first week of Bloomberg's campaign the New York mayor spent over $30 billion in, most of it in TV ads, more than all the money raised by the Harris campaign since she announced her candidacy last January.

Surprising most political pundits, Harris dropped out before her lesser known AAPI rivals Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii and business entrepreneur Andrew Yang, both who have not yet qualified for the next debate on Dec. 19 at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

Yang and Gabbard tweeted their reactions:

If Gabbard and Yang, as well as Julian Castor and Cory Booker do not meet the qualifications set by the DNC, it will be the first pre-primary debate without any candidates of color. 

As of this date, only six of the remaining 16 candidates have qualified including Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigeig, Tom Steyer and Elizabeth Klobuchar giving rise to the hashtag #PrimariesSoWhite.

CCORRECTION: Earlier versions of this erroneously reported that Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang had qualified for the Dec. 19 debate.

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