July 16, 2008
There might be another first coming in a 2008 presidential campaign that has already given us the first presumptive African-American nominee, nearly brought a female one, briefly put a Mormon in the frontrunner’s spot and has a long-term Vietnam War prisoner going for the big spot. This time Jews – an integral base to the Democratic Party’s coalition since the FDR campaigns of the 1930s – are reconsidering.
In fact, a new poll out says that Jewish support for Democratic presumptive nominee Sen. Barack Obama is the lowest for any of the party’s recent picks. That’s despite an overwhelmingly negative view of the George Bush-led GOP. The survey, according to the JTA Wire Service and commissioned by the Washington-based advocacy Jewish group J Street, found that only 58 percent of American Jews said they would definitely vote for Obama. Another 4 percent said they were leaning toward him.
Now that still sounds like a lot, but consider that Al Gore and Bill Clinton both drew around 80 percent of the Jewish vote in their presidential bids. In 2004 candidate Sen. John Kerry picked up 76 percent.
Most interesting is that unlike in other years when Jewish numbers for Democrats dropped, there’s no strong independent siphoning off some of them– a John Anderson or a Ross Perot.
That doesn’t mean that Jews are rushing to be elephants. Only 29 percent said they would vote for Republican Sen. John McCain – only five percent more than Bush’s 2004 mark. (Another three percent are leaning toward McCain.)
What this really means is that some Jews simply are not enthusiastic about Obama, which could hurt his fundraising among them (which, truth be told, is doing fine any way). That means that if Obama wins, the Jewish community will not play such a large role as in past years, which could have long-term implications. However, I think that if the number of Jewish support can get above 65 percent – and I see that as likely – Obama will continue to see American Jewry as an important to his coalition.
The reason for this skittishness, of course, is the last sting of distrust that Obama engendered by not immediately rejecting the racist and anti-American comments of his former spiritual leader, the flamboyant Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I personally think Jews – at least ones with active brains – laugh at reports that Obama is a secret Muslim who will poison our kids with jihad juice.
Obama might be a lot of things, but he is no terrorist. He is, however, a politician and as the Rev. Jesse Jackson just learned, for better or worse he will act like one first, second and third.
Posted by on 07/16/08 at 11:25 AM | Comments (0)
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