Obama and the Jewish Vote

The New Republic has an interesting piece on the web regarding Obama's standing with the Jewish vote. Early Democratic fears circulated that Jews, one of the party's most loyal voting blocs, would abandon Obama in the general election for John McCain. However, as the article notes, the Obama campaign has done a tremendous job of bringing many once-apprehensive Jewish voters back into the Democratic fold:

Obama managed to hold onto the Jewish vote in part because of choices he made early on in the election, namely his struggle to prove himself tough on Jewish issues and to combat the viral smear campaigns with information campaigns of his own. When his Middle East policy adviser Robert Malley admitted to having met regularly with Hamas, Obama fired him from the campaign. He also distanced himself from President Carter under similar circumstances. For outreach coordination, Obama hired Dan Shapiro, a well-regarded former Bill Nelson staffer who put together a relentlessly on-message operation that distributed endless talking points to allies and potential allies. Last January, for example, the campaign circulated a letter signed by the heads of the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center denouncing the smear campaign.

"[Obama's people] weren't doing more than Hillary," says long-time Jewish Democratic operative Steve Rabinowitz, who supported Clinton in the primaries. "But Obama needed it more. And they were as aggressive as possible."

While the Jewish vote is very small as a whole, Jewish voter turnout is high and can potentially impact the balance in several close states. Additionally, financial support from Jewish voters and groups is always key in a presidential contest.

I make this post not so much to show how Obama is now as strong with the Jewish vote as John Kerry was in 2004, but just to give another example of what a smooth, smart operation Obama has run all year. Basically, he and his advisers identify a problem, and they deal with it with cold precision and often to great effect. In this case, recognizing the breadth of the problem, Team Obama aggressively pursued measures to correct it.

This contrasts with the McCain campaign on several levels:

At the same time, the response of Jewish Republicans and McCain supporters to Obama's late surge with Jewish voters has been disorganized and inept. In late October, the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), the major independent Jewish group on McCain's side, released a flurry of direct mail and TV advertisements reminding voters of Obama's ties to Reverend Jeremiah Wright and former terrorist William Ayers. Targeted to swing states with large Jewish populations, the RJC's campaign cost upwards of $1 million. But voters yawned--the campaign was on the air just as Obama's numbers among Jewish voters were going up. Part of the problem is that McCain's initial appeal to the Jewish community was largely predicated on his position as a moderate Republican. As he's shed his moderate image--or as Obama's campaign has undermined it--his appeal to Jewish voters has declined. And attacks that seem too partisan further alienate Jewish voters, who tend to be center-left to liberal--perhaps a reason why McCain's recent attempts to associate Obama with Palestinian-American professor Rashid Khalidi haven't stuck.

Finally, the contrast between the two vice-presidential nominees provided a major lift for Obama and may have been the central factor in turning the Jewish vote around[...]

[I]t would be hard to overestimate the role that Sarah Palin has played in bringing the Jewish vote solidly behind Obama. During the national honeymoon that followed her selection and convention speech, Jewish voters simply did not share the rest of the country's enthusiasm--and that was the very moment when Jewish polling numbers began to tip back in Obama's favor. According to an American Jewish Committee poll, 54 percent of Jews disapproved of her selection. As Koch told me, perhaps summarizing the Jewish community's collective response: "She scares the hell out of me."

After choosing Palin, McCain was no longer running the campaign of a moderate Republican. He could no longer hammer away at Obama on Israel, for he had selected a nominee with literally zero record on the issue...

John McCain was likely never going to win the Jewish vote, but any gains he could have made this year were undue by campaign's overly-harsh and even silly and tired attacks on Obama. As the author notes, the pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate was the final straw for many voters who had been either leaning towards McCain or were still nervous about Obama.

We can add Jewish voters to the growing category of "political collateral damange" from the Palin pick, which, in pushing McCain away from moderates and towards conservatives, has ended up undermining McCain with the very groups he needed to pick up in order to win in this national environment.