APIAVote’s presidential townhall

The APIAVote‘s presidential town hall took place as scheduled at UCI’s Bren Events Center on Sunday. When it was first planned, it was going to be an exciting and important part of the presidential candidates’ efforts to reach out to the Asian Pacific Islander American voters.

However, as history unfolded, John McCain is now the Republican nominee, Barrack Obama is winning the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton is barely hanging on, and California still looks solidly in the blue column.

The APIAVote town hall still went forward, but none of the presidential candidates came.

Hillary appeared by live satelite feed, but she just read from a prepared text. The prepared text contains answers to questions sent by APIAVote, but it’s still just prepared text.

Obama couldn’t be reached on TV, so he called in by phone, and answered live questions from selected members of the API community.

McCain was busy getting ready for Saturday Night Live, so he sent a surrogate to speak live to the audience, California Assemblyman Van Tran.

The Bolsavik was there, and he met this really cool Viet dude who works for Asiaxpress.com. His name is Joe Nguyen, and he blogged live from the event.

Read his report — or rather, reports — and see his super cool pix, here. SORRY, link doesn’t work any more. The host (blogger.com) blocked Joe’s site for alleged violation of the TOS. Don’t see how, though.

Oh, and by the way:

TODAY IS THE LAST DAY TO REGISTER TO VOTE IN THE UPCOMING JUNE 3 PRIMARY ELECTIONS. (If you have registered before, you don’t need to re-register. But if you haven’t, register now. You can decide later whether to actually vote. )