China Girl

The Los Angeles Times has this amusing report from New York's Chinatown, which, amazingly happens to be a major fund-raising hot spot for Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign:

Something remarkable happened at 44 Henry St., a grimy Chinatown tenement with peeling walls. It also happened nearby at a dimly lighted apartment building with trash bins clustered by the front door

And again not too far away, at 88 E. Broadway beneath the Manhattan bridge, where vendors chatter in Mandarin and Fujianese as they hawk rubber sandals and bargain-basement clothes.

All three locations, along with scores of others scattered throughout some of the poorest Chinese neighborhoods in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, have been swept by an extraordinary impulse to shower money on one particular presidential candidate -- Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Dishwashers, waiters and others whose jobs and dilapidated home addresses seem to make them unpromising targets for political fundraisers are pouring $1,000 and $2,000 contributions into Clinton's campaign treasury. In April, a single fundraiser in an area long known for its gritty urban poverty yielded a whopping $380,000. When Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) ran for president in 2004, he received $24,000 from Chinatown.

Gee, who knew Hillary could inspire such support from poor Chinese-American laborers? Or, perhaps, I should say, Hsu knew?

Despite doing a solid job of exposing all the seedy ways this money likely changed hands -- including pressure from the Chinese mafia -- the Times still holds out hope for Hilliary, noting that she was able to raise this cash through "appeals to the hopes and dreams of people now consigned to the margins."

Sure. Anyone care to guess how many people "consigned to the margins" in other ethnic groups are making $2,000 contributions to HRC '08?

Given her massive lead, both in money and in the polls, Clinton seems all but destined to win the Democratic nomination. All that could derail her is a major gaffe -- or a scandal.

If I were Barack Obama, I'd be sending investigators to Chinatown ...