Both parties do agree: It wasn’t a “push poll”
Republican Jewish Coalition executive director Matt Brooks says there was nothing wrong with it, Jewish Democrats say it was full of distortions and half-truths. But everyone does seem to agree on one thing regarding the RJC's controversial survey which tested negative Barack Obama messages over the weekend: It was not a "push poll."
Confirming what others had already pointed out, Democratic pollster Mark Mellman told JTA the RJC survey "doesn't meet the definition of a push poll" because of its large number of questions – 82, according to the RJC.
A push poll, say pollsters, is not really a poll at all, but a brief call intended solely to impart negative information via the form of a poll.
Republican pollster Neil Newhouse agreed with Mellman. He told JTA a true "push poll" would go to tens or hundreds of thousands of voters, while the RJC says it only spoke to 750 Jews in five swing states. He said the message testing that the RJC says it was doing in the poll is something all pollsters do.
Even Mik Moore, who as founder of Jewsvote.org first brought the poll to public attention, said he was willing to concede that the RJC survey did not meet the definition of a "push poll," but said it had "the effect" of a "push poll" because it upset people by spreading negative information about a candidate.
Brooks also said he objected to the characterization of the poll as a "negative Obama poll," arguing that the questions dealing with the Democratic presidential candidate were "less than 10 percent" of the survey.
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RJC (mis)plays the Buchanan card
You may recall that our own Ron Kampeas was quick to call out U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler over the Florida Democrat's rush to pounce on what proved to be flimsy reports that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin once backed Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign. The Republican Jewish Coalition also jumped in to defend Palin.
Well, now it's the RJC making a dubious play of the Buchanan card.
In its latest "Concerned about Barack Obama? You should be" ad, the RJC – already in the middle of a controversy regarding its recent telephone poll – declares that the Democrat's "Dangerous Views on Israel Have Just Been Endorsed by Pat Buchanan." At issue is Buchanan's recent assertion during an MSNBC broadcast that "I think Barack is right, we ought to talk to the Iranians" and "he's right to say the Palestinian people have got a terrible deal over there and their suffering ought to be recognized. That's Obama's position. It's my position."
The ad goes on to say: "The Anti-Defamation League says Buchanan 'publicly espouses racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and anti-immigrant views.' Yet, Buchanan calls his views on Israel, Iran and Palestinians the same as Obama's."
And the final line (in bold and larger font): "Pat Buchanan says he shares the same views on Israel as Barack Obama. Those views are dangerous, reckless and wrong."
It's hard to know where to start with all of this, since the ad is misleading and hypocritical on several levels. So let's begin with the easy (and short) part: What's true about this ad?
Well, the RJC accurately quoted Buchanan and Buchanan was right in saying that Obama thinks the United States should talk to the Iranians. Everything else requires clarification, if not a correction. [UPDATE: I've been hearing from some Republicans who want to know: If, as I say next, the ad quotes Buchanan accurately, how can I be so harsh in my judgment of it? Their argument is that it's not up to the RJC to fact check Buchanan, or read his mind. Not sure I buy it, but it's fair point and I wanted to put it out there.]
While Buchanan was accurately quoted on the Palestinian issue, his comments on MSNBC were (unintentionally, I suspect) misleading at best. Obama did say during a March 11, 2007 rally in Iowa that "nobody's suffering more than the Palestinian people from this whole process" – but the full quote clearly implied, and Obama later explicitly made clear, that he blames their suffering on Palestinian leaders, not Israel. So on the narrow point I suspect Obama and Buchanan do not agree. As for the Israeli-Palestinian situation more generally, Buchanan may think he is closer to Obama than to McCain, but on what grounds? He never says, so we (and the RJC) really have no idea.
What we do know is that both Obama and McCain favor a two-state solution, back the policy of isolating Hamas, think the United States should be bolstering Palestinian Authority President Mahmous Abbas, are committed to maintaining Israel's qualitative strategic edge and safeguarding the country's security, and say that Israel acted appropriately during the 2006 war against Hamas and Hezbollah.
Now I guess the RJC can say that none of these details matter – if Buchanan says he's closer to Obama than it must be so. But if we go by that standard, then we should toss out the facts in the Palin debate, and stick to Buchanan's claim that Palin supported his 1996 presidential run.
All of this would have been enough, but the RJC decided to open up a ridiculous can of worms by citing the ADL (wonder how the ADL feels about being used in this way, especially since its director, Abe Foxman, has said that both presidential candidates are solidly pro-Israel). What exactly is the RJC trying to imply by noting the ADL's assertion that Buchanan espouses racist, anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant views? That Obama should in some way be tainted on all of these fronts because Buchanan happens to say he agrees with him on some other issue? That Obama shares Buchanan's alleged hangups with black people, and hence they end up in the same place on Israel?
According to this way of thinking, it would seem that the much more relevant point is that the ADL says Buchanan is racist, and he agrees with McCain on affirmative action. Or, the ADL says Buchanan is anti-immigrant, and he is now closer to McCain on the issue than he is to Obama.
To be clear, this line of attack against McCain would also be unfair, but it's where we end up if we play out the RJC's logic. And that's before we ask what, based on the logic of this ad, does it say about McCain that he and Buchanan both claim the same president (Ronald Reagan) as a political heir hero. And, for that matter, what does it say about Reagan that he employed Buchanan?
Now that you mention it... Hey, RJC, why you bustin' on the Gipper?
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Jewish voter recounts “push poll”
The Republican Jewish Coalition is denying that a recent survey was in fact a "push poll" meant to plant nasty ideas about Barack Obama in the minds of Jewish voters. But try telling that to Joelna Marcus, who is convinced the Republican machine is behind the calls. Marcus recounted the phone call she received at her New Jersey home Sunday afternoon in an interview with JTA conducted outside the New York offices of the company that conducted the poll.
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Dems, Jewish leaders takin’ it to the streets? (UPDATED)
EDITOR'S NOTE: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this post included anonymous criticisms that should not have been published. The post has been revised to reflect JTA's standards.
Five years or so ago, top Democrats convened an emergency session: How do we get Jews back into the Democratic fold?
The panic was premature, and predicated on the ephemera of President Bush's post-Sept. 11 popularity, soon to diffuse with the failures of the Iraq war. John Kerry won 75 percent of the Jewish vote, and for Dems all was right in the world.
No longer, but this time it's the Jews who might want to convene a meeting on how to get Dems back into the fold.
The most recent fashla (Hebrew for Snafu) is the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations' failure until the last minute to invite someone from the Obama campaign to attend its rally Sept. 22 to protest Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's attendance at the U.N. General Assembly. (So says the Obama campaign.)
The seriousness of the upset was underscored by the unsolicited call I got Wednesday morning from an Obama campaign official: "The Obama campaign was not called until this morning, after the debacle with Sen. Clinton."
Them's fighting words, and unusually strong ones at that.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) had been invited, separate from the camapign; she pulled out Wednesday when she learned that Alaska Gov. and Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin was to attend. (Palin has not confirmed, according to the latest reports.)
The Dems logic is as follows: A senator is not the same as someone on the ticket. As soon as the Conference of Presidents got Palin (last week apparently) they should have called Obama's folks, is how the thinking goes.
Additionally, there's nothing the campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) would love more than a Clinton-Palin pairing (the real kind, as opposed to the Saturday Night Live version): it would lend credibility to the campaign's claim to the women voters who felt shunted by Clinton's loss in the primaries.
Dem insiders say that fits a pattern of what they claim is a rightward tilt at the conference, under the leadership of executive vice chairman Malcolm Hoenlein. We're trying to reach Hoenlein for a reply, but in his defense it must be said that he recently gave Howard Dean, the party's chairman, free rein at a conference session this summer. Not to mention that some of the conference's right-wing members have been know to grumble that, despite some liberal claims to the contrary, Hoenlein is not one of them.
It's Hoenlein's second to-and-fro with the Obama campaign. In February, he expressed concerns about the "change" tone of the election: Obama campaigners thought that was directed at their candidate, who has most emphasized change, but Hoenlein said he was talking more broadly about campaigns within both parties. Whether it was related or not, weeks later Hoenlein was touting the bipartisan credentials of the conference's 60th anniversary of Israel committee.
Scrambling to kiss and make up might not do it this time, though: Dems are not afraid to say, on the record, that they perceive a pattern of some Jewish establishment leaders allowing themselves to be used by the Republicans, whether it's because of shared neoconservative values, or because there's a longstanding tradition in Washington of, well, fearing Republican retribution more than the Democratic kind.
Ira Forman, the director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, said Hoenlein has to explain more than just this incident because it's not his first time in the hot spot. "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, there's a good chance it is a duck," he said of his suspicions of Hoenlein's Republican sympathies.
UPDATED FROM HERE:
There have been occasions in recent years when similar tensions have arisen between Democrats and major Jewish groups, particularly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Congressional Democrats were furious last summer when AIPAC failed to excoriate Republicans for voting against the foreign assistance package. AIPAC has long made support for the package the sine qua non of getting into its good graces, partly, of course, because of its Israel component; but also because the organization sees an overall American commitment to global foreign aid as a pillar in perpetuating support for Israel. It's made mince meat in the past of Democrats who have voted against the appropriation in the past (to protest perceived Republican underfunding of overseas aid) but was silent in 2007 when the GOP whipped against the bill in a bid to depict Democrats as overly generous overseas and as committed to programs that fund abortions.
That and other rifts have led Democrats to more outspokenly carpet AIPAC when they think its steering wrong – listen to Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), Obama's running mate, blow a gasket when I asked him about his pro-AIPAC voting record earlier this month. (Some close to the situation say that the Obama camp has said that Biden mistakenly thought I said that AIPAC itself had criticized him, when in fact I had cited attacks fro the Republican Jewish Coalition.)
The latest manifestation – unrelated to the Clinton-Palin-Hoenlein contretemps – was today (Wednesday) when J Street, the dovish pro-Israel lobby aiming to undercut the pro-AIPAC consensus on the Hill, hosted a "strategy session" on the Hill with its endorsees. At first, establishment Jewish leaders mocked the J Street endorsee list as marginal, but it now includes Jewish pro-Israel heavyweights, including U.S. Reps. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Bob Filner (D-Calif.) Schakowsky and Filner both spoke at the event, and said they welcomed the opportunity to be perceived as pro-Israel beyond the traditional Jewish establishment constraints. Schakowsky said debate on the peace process is more robust in Israel than in Washington, a trope that was once unimaginable from a Jewish lawmaker.
Filner agreed, telling J Street: "You give us the option to vote the way we should be voting."
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RJC fesses up to involvement in negative Obama poll
The Republican Jewish Coalition has admitted it sponsored a negative poll about Barack Obama.
Politico reported Tuesday evening that the RJC took responsibility for the phone poll in swing states, which asked voters their response to negative statements about Obama. Those statements included reported praise for him from a leader of the Palestinian terror group Hamas and a friendship early in his career with a pro-Palestinian university professor.
RJC executive director Matt Brooks told the publication that his organization conducted the poll to "understand why Barack Obama continues to have a problem among Jewish voters."
Brooks denied that the poll was a "push poll" meant to influence Jewish voters, and said it was a traditional survey meant to gauge the opinions of Jewish voters.
A top Jewish Obama supporter slammed the RJC. "Peddling lies and hateful distortions to scare Jewish voters is reprehensible and deeply disrespectful to Jewish Americans," said Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.).
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