Good news — Matthew Yglesias and other liberal bloggers may be ignoring the Barack Obama campaign’s nativist smear of Hillary Clinton as “D-Punjab,” but the Indian American community is pushing back very effectively:
Members of the U.S.-India Political Action Committee were outraged.
“For any candidate to imply there is something wrong with getting Indian-American support, that is upsetting – very upsetting – for our members,” the PAC’s boss, Sanjay Puri, told The Post, adding that he received numerous calls and e-mails from angered members.
Puri fired off a letter to Obama demanding the Illinois senator “respond directly” to media reports about the research memo “and let us know if indeed your staff is promoting these hurtful stereotypes.”
“We have been encouraged by your message of inclusion and your promise to bring a new kind of politics to our country,” Puri wrote.
“This is why we are so concerned about media reports indicating your staff may be engaging in the worst kind of anti-Indian-American stereotyping.”
Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, responded to Puri’s letter by saying: “Barack Obama has been a longtime friend of the Indian-American community, and our campaign is fortunate to have strong support from Indian-Americans across the country.
“The intent of the document was to discuss the issue of outsourcing, but we regret the tone that parts of the document took.”
In addition, the South Asians for Obama ’08 group is promising a more direct apology from the campaign (via Josh Gerstein of the New York Sun):
After reading the story, SAFO immediately went to work drafting a response to the campaign. As we were finalizing this response — but before we could send it — we received a call from the campaign in Chicago. We learned, as we had already suspected, that the memo did not reflect Senator Obama’s views regarding the Indian American community, and he was deeply disturbed by its content…
On Friday evening, Senator Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe issued the following statement: “Barack Obama has been a longtime friend of the Indian-American community and our campaign is fortunate to have strong support from Indian-Americans across the country. The intent of the document was to discuss the issue of outsourcing, but we regret the tone that parts of the document took.”
The response prompted a variety of reactions from our community. As organizers of an effort committed to building a relationship between the campaign and the South Asian American community, we were less than satisfied. However, we have new reason for optimism. We have been in contact with the campaign over the weekend and are confident that this issue is now receiving the attention of those at the highest level. The Senator himself is cognizant of our concerns (not just with the memo, but also the initial response) and has made clear his intention to address the situation personally. The campaign has already begun reaching out to individual members of the community, and a more public gesture will be forthcoming. Over the next several days, we will continue to communicate with the campaign to convey the sentiments of the community regarding this incident and work toward a positive resolution.
I hope this is true. The memo was more directly anti-Indian than anything I’ve seen recently in contemporary politics. Obama has a lot to apologize for.
(For more coverage of the controversy, see here, here, and here. The only well-known liberal blogger among the highly ranked blogs on Technorati who has criticized Obama for the smear is John Aravosis of AMERICAblog.)
Update 6/19 12:21 PM: Obama apologized for the smear yesterday. In a post today, Yglesias calls the memo “moronic” but says it “isn’t a very interesting issue.”