Florida delegates: We’re behind Barack, but have work to do back home
"I don't want anyone to blame Hillary if [Obama] loses the election," said Jewish Democratic National Convention Hillary Clinton delegate Bill Kling Wednesday morning. Her speech was "absolutely heartfelt. ...I think she did enough to show her support."
The 80-year-old Plantation resident was representative of his fellow Florida Jewish delegates pledged for Clinton. They lauded her speech Tuesday night, said they were 100 percent behind Barack Obama but acknowledged that some of their fellow Jewish Clinton supporters in South Florida were still not sold on the presumptive nominee.
"A lot of [Jewish Democrats] are saying .... they're not going to vote," said Kling.
Diana Mazel Pittarelli of Hollywood said she said seen the hostility toward Obama in Broward County that others have also described. "A lot of these people ... don't know enough about him." She added that many of the reasons they provide for not liking Obama – from his name to his policies on the Middle East – are simply "excuses for other things," namely their reluctance to vote for a black candidate. As a realtor who has brought black families to South Florida condo boards, Pittarelli said she is familiar with it.
Others were more optimistic. "Little by little," she's seeing former Clinton supporters jump on the Obama bandwagon, said Diane Glasser, first vice chair of the Florida Democratic Party and a superdelegate. She hoped she'd see some further movement when she returned home, due to Clinton's speech.
"It's hard for older people to let go," said Bunny Steinman of Boynton Beach, president of the Democratic Club of Greater Boynton. But "I see people coming around. ... I think it's doable."
Steinman, like others, said the most help would be for the Democratic candidate himself to introduce himself personally to their neighbors. "Obama needs to come down and get in to some of these older communities," she said.
Even an Obama delegate could understand the reason for some reluctance by Clinton supporters. "It's a process," said Mark Alan Siegel of Boca Raton. "When the future of the Jewish people is at stake, you want to be really careful." He said that more education and dissemination of "accurate information ... around the minyan table" should do the trick.
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At the Dem convention, the aliyas keep rising
We're getting into Hineh Ma Tov area here.
The Jews keep coming at the Democratic convention in Denver. As we noted previously, four rabbis participated in the interfaith launch on Sunday, National Jewish Democratic Council vice-chairwoman Sunita Leeds helped set the rules on Monday, firebrands Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) helped stoke the anti-GOP flames on Tuesday and on Wednesday….
* U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) is among the nominators of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), the presumptive nominee;
* U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is the first to speak after roll call;
* U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), self-described "fire-breathing liberal" and the Obama campaign's chief Jewish surrogate speaks just after 5 pm local time'
* U.S. Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) is among eight congresswomen saluting "Women of the U.S. House of Representatives."
Helping to round out the evening are Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state, and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). Both made headlines when they learned of their Jewish parentage. (Okay, Albright because she seemed embarrassed and Kerry because he embraced it. But still.)
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Waxman on good turns deserving others
When it comes to Barack Obama and the Jews, U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) has some advice as old as Hillel, and it sounds a lot like "Do unto others."
Waxman, the powerful chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee adds a twist to familiar appeals to Jewish Democrats attending the party convention this week in Denver not to pay attention to smear rumors targeting Sen. Obama (D-Ill.), the party's presumptive nominee.
Waxman notes that U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) was similarly targeted by anti-Semitic smears propagated by allies of an African American rival in the majority black district.
Cohen won the primary earlier this month with an overwhelming majority that included three quarters of the black vote.
It's an example Jews can use, Waxman told JTA.
"There's a very cynical effort by Republicans to raise a lot of anxieties in the American Jewish community about Barack Obama," he said, and listed false rumors of an association with Louis Farrakhan, the anti-Semitic black nationalist; false rumors about Obama being a Muslim; and smearing Obama as having a secret antipathy to Israel that he will unleash only after his election.
"We have to reject these smears just as people in the African American community rejected smears against Steve Cohen because he's Jewish," Waxman said.
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Flaum makes it five
The GOP convention has made it to half a minyan.
David Flaum, the chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition, is one of five Jewish speakers scheduled to address the GOP convention next week in St. Paul.
Of course, that's about how many Jewish speakers the Democrats have in a given night this week in Denver. But the GOP is batting nicely in the quality department: In addition to an invocation by Rabbi Ira Flax from Birmingham, Ala., speakers include homeboy Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) and Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle (who might have a thing or two to tell fellow Republicans about mocking native son Barack Obama's vacation choices).
And then there's Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) Didn't he play a role in another convention a while back?
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Debbie takes the vows
There's converting and there's becoming a priest.
U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) is one of four people formally nominating Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) to the presidency on Wednesday evening at the Democratic Party convention in Denver.
Wasserman Schultz, of course, was one of the more avid supporters of Obama's rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.)
True, you interject, but didn't Hillary urge her followers to back Obama Tuesday night in what is already being dubbed as one of the most galvanizing ever convention speeches?
Yes, but Sen. Clinton is also being formally nominated Wednesday evening, a nod to the close race she ran – and Wasserman Schultz has opted out of that party. (Unknown at press time: Whether Clinton has asked her delegates to vote for Obama during the roll call Wednesday night. That meeting is taking place today at 1:30 or thereabouts.)
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JTA VIDEO: Jewish pols talk up Obama
Here's Eric Fingerhut's video report on a balck-Jewish event and a press conference held by Jewish lawmakers to talk up Obama.
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Political Tidbits: Biden vs. Begin, Lieberman and Cantor buzz, new pro-Obama Jewish effort
- Commentary editor John Podhoretz has two posts up (here and here) about Joe Biden's testy 1982 exchange in the Senate with Menachem Begin and the young senator's reported threat to cut off aid to Israel over settlements (of course, you don't even have to go that far back to find Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein and Dick Cheney working to lift sanctions aimed at Iran).
- The Republican Jewish Coalition has a statement out highlighting the Begin incident – and several pro-Israel resolutions and letters that Biden failed to back.
- Douglas Bloomfield argues in the Jerusalem Post that Joe Biden is more in sync with Jewish voters than Joe Lieberman is.
- Eric Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in the House, is in Denver: "I'm part of the John McCain truth squad here in Denver." And, by the way, his kids "think it's cool" that he's in the middle of the Veep buzz.
- Without much hard evidence, New York Magazine dubs Joe Lieberman ... "Joe Vengeance." And left-wing blogger Richard Silverstein says he'd be a bad Veep.
- The New York Post: Rudy Giuliani rips Obama on Israel. Politico: Obama campaign responds (and plays the house card).
- Speaking of Politico ... Ben Smith, one of our favorites (and TNR's rookie of the year), has a story on a new pro-Obama Jewish outfit.
- The Forward reports that the Obama campaign has tapped a new Arab outreach director.
- Paul Starobin of the National Journal: "Obama's A Mensch, Not Yet Mishbucha."
- The Washington Times profiles a Jewish grandmother who loves Obama so much, she is paying to volunteer for him.
- The Miami Herald reports on a Republican non-Jew named Israel running for sheriff in Broward County: "In Pembroke Pines, Israel's supporters handed out small Israeli flags and urged voters to 'support Israel,' hoping it would give them a boost with the hundreds of Jewish voters in Century Village."
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Postville raid wasn’t kosher, says Dem faith caucus participant
The first discussion held at the Democratic National Convention's faith caucus on Tuesday included talk of the federal raid on the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa – but there was no condemnation of alleged worker conditions there or arguments about the kashrut at the facility.
Instead, Bishop Wilfredo DeJesus, of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, brought up the May federal raid at the plant, which resulted in close to 400 arrests, as an example of the faults in U.S. immigration policy. Those arrested, he said, cannot work but cannot return to their country of origin, leaving their children to "go hungry."
Such raids "do not enhance our national security or our economic security," DeJesus said.
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Jewish pro-Obama site tries to turn negative into positive
Politico reports on jewsvote.org, a new political action committee that is trying to use the same kinds of social networks which originally spread false rumors about Barack Obama to disseminate a positive message about the candidate in the Jewish community.
The Jewish Council for Educational Research was co-founded by Mik Moore, who took a leave from his job at Jewish Funds for Justice to work on the project through the Novemeber election. The site asks registrants for their contact list, then provides a variety of ways for members to reach those people with information about Obama.
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NJ Jews at Dem convention want unity
The little Jewish corner of the New Jersey delegation was hardly united in designation: two were delegates for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), two were for Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and one was an unpledged "superdelegate."
They were united in opinion, however: The time had come to unify the party and back the presumptive nominee.
I asked the group what they expected from Clinton's speech in a precious few minutes before ushers hustled me off the convention floor in Denver (reporters are allowed on the floor, but apparently are not permitted to report.)
"As a staunch and passionate supporter of Hillary Clinton, I have every confidence she will stress the importance of real change and the need to defeat John McCain," said Steven Goldstein of Tenafly. (Clinton did, and judging from the reception, hit a home run.).
"We don't want four more years of Republican rule," agreed another Clinton delegate, Pat Sebold of Livingston. The others nodded in agreement.
After thinking a bit, Goldstein felt he needed to add a caveat - but not about Clinton's speech. Anticipating Obama's acceptance speech Thursday night, he said: "As a Jewish delegate, I would like him to touch on Israel. Am I a one issue voter? No. But that issue is paramount to me."
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