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AIPAC: We like Biden

By Ami Eden · August 25, 2008

Thumbs up for Biden from an AIPAC spokesman:

Sen Biden is a strong supporter of the US-Israel relationship and he has longstanding ties to AIPAC and the pro-Israel community.

Throughout his career in the Senate, Joe Biden has been to Israel numerous times and has gotten to know many of Israel's most important leaders.

Now, to be clear, AIPAC also has had warm words for Barack Obama and John McCain. So don't confuse this with an endorsement. After all, these guys aren't stupid – they don't need to be making enemies with the future president and vice president, no matter who they are.

But, that said, Biden does have a long record of working with AIPAC and Israel. And even one of the founders of Freedom's Watch had nice things to say.

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Political Tidbits: Kicking off convention, debating Biden

By Ami Eden · August 25, 2008

The Jerusalem Post reflects on Jewish Colorado and the wisdom of holding the Democratic convention in Denver.

The New York Sun says Jews at the convention are kvelling over the Biden pick. Here's why they should be, according to the National Jewish Democratic Council.

And the Republican Jewish Coalition plays the Iran card in making the case for why Jews shouldn't be kvelling (JTA's Ron Kampeas is on the story).

Mendy Ganchrow, a former president of the Orthodox Union, founder of a pro-Israel PAC and frequent supporter of GOP candidates, splits the difference.

Ha'aretz: The Dems say they'll convince the Jews not to be afraid of Obama.

The New Republic looks at the Democratic Party's efforts to reach out to the faithful at the convention. (Kampeas is all over the same topic here and here.)

The New York Times takes a look at Marissa Shorenstein, 29, whose now attended five Democratic conventions. Her great-great uncle, Hyman Schorenstein, was the legendary party boss of Brownsville, Brooklyn, and a delegate to the raucous Democratic National Convention in New York in 1924.

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For Wasserman Schultz, it’s back to Biden (UPDATE)

By Ron Kampeas · August 25, 2008

For Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Joe Biden's clinch of the vice-presidential spot on Barack Obama's ticket is like the – what – prodigal mentor?

"He's like mishpoche!" the Florida congresswoman enthused to JTA, contemplating the Delaware senator's clinching of the vice presidential spot on the Democratic ticket, alongside Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)

Back in 1987, Wasserman Schultz explained, she was a member of the Florida chapter of Students for Biden. That campaign went down early in the primaries after Biden's temper and plagiarism allegations got the better of him.

Now, it's make up time, and Wasserman Schultz thinks Biden, a familiar of the schmeer and schmooze circuit up and down the East Coast, will do a great job winning over older Jewish constituents embittered by the loss of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) to Obama.

"He'll come down and move around the bagel places and the condos," she said. "It'll be like a son." Of the prodigal kind?

Here's audio of Ron Kampeas and Eric Fingerhut's interview with the congresswoman:

[audio:/images/archive/wasserman.mp3] Audio sound funny? Upgrade your Flash player.

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UPDATE: Wasserman Schultz's enthusiasm and efforts ob behalf Obama are especially worth noting, considering the increasing talk about Hillary Clinton supporters (and the Clintons themselves) still being upset about her loss to and treatment by Barack Obama.

Asked Sunday at the inaugural meeting of the Obama campaign's Colorado Jewish Community Leadership Committee in Denver about rumors of Clinton backers disrupting the convention, Wasserman Schultz – a big Clinton backer during the primary – quickly dismissed the idea as silly and also utilized her one-time support of Obama's opponent as a selling point.

"As someone who did not support Barack Obama during the primary, I can assure you I have 100 percent confidence in his support for Israel," she told the more than 200 people in attendance.

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Dems keep the faith

By Ron Kampeas · August 25, 2008

For the party trying to change the impression that it hasn't got enough religion, Democrats got maybe a little too much on Sunday.

Hundreds of party faithful got dollops of, well, faith in the cavernous Wells Fargo Theater in what organizers repeatedly reassured whomever would listen was the first time a major party convention was launched with a faith meeting. (What about the Temperance Party? Just asking.)

"We didn't need to bring faith to the party!" Leah Daughtry, a Pentecostal preacher who is also the conventions CEO, shouted out. "Faith was already here!"

If the Democrats wanted to look diverse, the absence of a white male Protestant until a very brief glimpse at the very end of the service achieved that: there were three Muslims (including two women), four rabbis (three men and one women), a Buddhist, three African American preachers, and so on. (The WMP was Rev. Shaun Casey, who joined Rabbi Marc Schneier, an Imam and a Catholic lay leader in delivering the closing litany.)

There was a diversity of political opinion as well, making this religious gambit, well, typically Democratic. Try to imagine this tussling at the GOP convention:

• Bishop Charles E. Blake of the Church of God in Christ excoriated Democrats for backing abortion rights, speaking of the "spiritual pain so many of us feel at this disregard of the lives of the unborn." (He didn't let Republicans off the hook, excoriating them for abandoning the poor after they're born.)
• Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter tossed out the party's notions of church-state separation: "Politics is the understanding that there is a God, that there is a created world."
• Sister Helen Prejean, the Roman Catholic nun who wrote the best-selling indictment of capital punishment "Dead Man Walking" (and who joined Janet Weisssssss in the "Susan Sarandon played me" club) excoriated what she described as the American culture of violence: "What has happened to us?" she said, citing the Iraq war and the sanction of torture by American authorities.

Somehow, though, the session worked, infused as it was with the atmosphere of a typical Sunday church outing, with attendants dressed in their Sunday best and whooping agreement with Jews, Muslims and Christians alike - and not to mention the four choirs.

A highlight was the keynote speech by Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, who directs the Orthodox Union. His exegesis of the concept of neighborliness, drawing on biblical Talmudic and modern rabbinical examples (Rabbi Kook cited at a Democratic convention? Go figure), drew enthusiastic applause: He drew more than one strong "Amen!" prompting him to plead to laughter, "Let's try the Hebrew Amen, Ah-mein." The crowd complied and he said: "Now I feel at home."

At home enough that he managed to insinuate into his speech a couple of notions not usually sounded at Democratic gatherings, including support for school vouchers.

One salutary effect: Clergy got to see how familiar liturgy plays with an unfamiliar crowd. Weinreb recounted the story of Hillel explaining the Torah to a non-Jew standing on one leg. It's punchline: "'That which is hateful to you do not do unto your neighbors, that's all of God's teachings, the rest is commentary' – and finally he said, 'now go out and study the commentary,'" drew gales of laughter.

Rabbi Amy Schwartzman of Temple Rodef Shalom in Falls Church, Va, who delivered an opening prayer, remarked afterward: "I didn't know that story was funny!" (Schwartzman made the remark as she and Rabbi Steven Foster, of Denver's Congregation Emanuel, busily punched exchanged info into their respective cellphones. From Hillel to the 21st century in a flash!)

(As for the title to this blogpost - a recording of the Bon Jovi classic was how the session wound down.)

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Charlie Wilson begs off war talk

By Ron Kampeas · August 25, 2008

The potential for an attack on Iran? That's not Charlie Wilson's war.

"I don't think we should invade Iran tomorrow," the former Texas Democratic congressman famed in print and on film for his efforts to rout the Soviets from Afghanistan told JTA. "I don't think we should invade Russia. I'm a little concerned that the current administration is a bit trigger happy…" and then he trailed and begged off, noting that as a happy retiree in Texas all this war talk wasn't his business anymore.

Wilson, in his time a leading congressional friend to Israel (who drew on the friendship to help arm the Afghan Mujahedeen) was attending the National Jewish Democratic Council's Sunday evening convention launch, and there were a lot of friendly hugs and how are yous.

One overheard tidbit: Wilson told friends he thought Julia Roberts, who played Joanne Herring, the Texas socialite who financed his escapades and, um, enjoyed his company, got the role just right in the film of his exploits starring Tom Hanks. Herring is on the record as saying Roberts' portrayal veered into unladylike behavior she would never have countenanced.

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Obama adviser: McCain is lying about embassy move

By Eric Fingerhut · August 25, 2008

A top Jewish adviser to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said Sunday that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is "100 percent disingenous" when he says he will move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem on "day one" of his presidency.

"The U.S. Jewish community should not be lied to, and told disingenous stories, about where the embassy will be at what day and time," said Eric Lynn, the Obama campaign's national Jewish vote director, on Sunday at the first meeting of the Obama campaign's Colorado Jewish Community Leadership Committee at a hotel in Denver. "All of us heard Governor Bush made similar promises." Bush did make the same pledge during his 2000 campaign, but has signed a waiver every six months of his presidency deferring the move for national security reasons, a move permitted under a 1995 law requiring the move.

"Senator Obama has stated that Jeruslaem is the capital of Israel and as such the U.S. Embassy shall be there," said Lynn, but "he will not make promises that will not be kept." The statement was in response to a question about Obama's position on the site of the embassy.

More than 200 people heard Lynn talk about the presumptive Democratic nominee's trip to Israel, as well as Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) discuss why Obama is the best presidential choice for the Jewish community.

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Noshing in Denver

By Eric Fingerhut · August 25, 2008

They didn't get a chance to sample the corned beef sandwiches, but more than a couple hundred people, Jews and non-Jews, came out to Zaidy's Deli in Denver Sunday afternoon for a "Nosh and Shmooze." That was what Democratic National Committee vice chair Susan Turnbull called the welcome party she hosted for her friends from her home state of Maryland and from around the country. Among those noshing on cheese, crackers, brownies, lemon bars and other desserts were Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), American Jewish Congress president Richard Gordon and American Israel Public Affairs Committee chairman of the board Howard Friedman.

Turnbull noted that when she first talking about hosting the event last winter, some of her colleagues didn't know what a "nosh" was. So her invitations to the event provided definitions for both "nosh" (to snack) and "shmooze" (to stand around and talk). And Turnbull pointed out that's what everyone did.

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