On the morning of Wednesday, July 10, 2024, U.S. Secretary of Labor Julie Su, who is currently the only Asian-American serving in President Joe Biden’s cabinet, came to The Breakfast Den on Philadelphia’s South Street to announce the launch of Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders for Biden-Harris, “a national effort to engage Asian Americans across the country”, in the words of the organizers. 

Other speakers included Nina Ahmad, the only active AAPI Philadelphia City Councilmember, Nikki Lu, President Biden’s Pennsylvania campaign manager, and Neil Makhija, the Montgomery County Commissioner. 

President Biden, at 81 years old, faces increasing pressure from both outsiders and his own party to reconsider his candidacy, with 86% of Americans believing that he is too old for another four years at America’s most powerful position, according to a February ABC News/Ipsos poll. On the other hand, 59% of Americans believe that both Trump and Biden are too old to serve another term. On American voters’ core issues, Biden is more popular on healthcare, climate change, abortion, and democracy, while voters trust Trump over Biden on crime, the economy, and immigration, according to the same survey. 

However, no matter what side of the political aisle you find yourself on, most agree that this election will be consequential for America’s path forward. Julie Su emphasized the importance of voting in such an important election, saying “I really have three words for you: margin of victory. You all, right here in Pennsylvania, are the margin of victory in this election. You all see every poll… and how close this election is going to be… The margin of victory… is going to be [decided by] our community – how AAPIs vote, whether AAPIs vote, and how we communicate to your family members, our friends, and our neighbors that they need to get out there to vote.”

Councilmember Nina Ahmad again stressed the importance of the AAPI voting bloc’s political power, saying that “when you come vote, it's really important because that segment of the population is making a statement that we want representation and that we want to be seen, and with representation comes resources.”

On why Asian-Americans should vote for the Biden-Harris ticket in November, Su cited Biden’s accomplishments, with the first on the laundry list being good jobs, remarking that “I’m only here because… my mom got a union job working for the county of Los Angeles and that job changed our lives. It got us health benefits. It got her retirement. It got her predictable hours. It let us be together.” 

The 3.4% US unemployment rate seen under the Biden administration is the lowest seen since October 1953 – “Good jobs is fundamental to this president’s agenda”, claimed Su.

Second on Biden’s agenda, according to Su, is small business. The Labor Secretary stated that “we have had more small business investment, more capital for small businesses, [and] more access to that capital for more businesses in this administration than any in history.”

Su also highlighted Biden’s efforts to improve the quality and accessibility of healthcare, “both for consumers of healthcare, but also for people who work in healthcare.” She specifically pointed to Biden’s insulin price cap of $35 a month for those on Medicare, which she says has “affected more than 2 million AAPI elders across this country.”

Another pressing issue to the AAPI community, Su claimed, is the lack of adequate Asian language access to AAPIs who do not speak English, declaring that “this president has made more languages available across all of our [public] services than any time in the history of this country, and that matters because you are seen, you are heard, and you are represented.”

Lastly, Biden’s actions on infrastructure benefit all of the American public, said Su. “We need, in all of our communities, good roads and bridges. We need to know that there’s clean drinking water that flows out of every faucet. We need to know that there is access to high-speed, reliable internet. And those things are being delivered because this president has made [the most] investments in infrastructure, in manufacturing, in clean energy, in our climate crisis…”

Su also reminded us of a dark time in Asian-American history, when anti-Asian hate crimes increased 339% during the COVID-19 pandemic, with many AAPIs, including Su’s own family, afraid to leave the house out of concern for safety. 

Su blames former President Trump for this violence, stating that “during COVID, there was a president in this country that took advantage of a crisis and turned it into a weapon against AAPIs… The amount of anti-Asian hate that was unleashed by a president who decided that calling a global pandemic the ‘Kung Flu’, a ‘China Virus’, that those kinds of things were appropriate for a national leader, and that the consequences that occurred from that didn’t matter to him, is outrageous to me.”

When asked about Biden’s age and mental ability to serve as President, Su dismissed these concerns, rebutting that as someone who has “been with him at the debate [and] on July 4th, this is a man who understands exactly what the role of the presidency requires… The age difference is not much between our two candidates, but the experience difference is vast, the decency difference could not be wider.”