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Political tidbits: Joe the Plumber takes on the Middle East and Shepard Smith is appalled

By Eric Fingerhut · October 29, 2008

• A Jewish senior citizen told “Joe the Plumber” at a campaign appearance Tuesday that the election of Obama would bring “death to Israel” – and Joe agreed. Later, asked by Fox News’ Shepard Smith whether he thinks John McCain agrees with him, Joe said he had no idea and it was his “personal opinion” that he’d come up with by “looking into different facts” – and that people shouldn’t listen to his opinion anyway. Smith is so appalled after the interview that he mutters “it just gets frightening sometimes” and states that Obama “has said and demonstrated repeatedly that Israel will always be a friend of the United States.” The Huffington Post has the video. The McCain campaign doesn’t seem nearly as disgusted, saying Joe is offering “penetrating and clear analysis.”
  
• David Gelernter writes in the Weekly Standard that the best word to describe John McCain is a Hebrew one – tsaddik, “a man of such nobility and moral substance that he approaches holiness.”
  
• The Huffington Post has the details on a Florida GOP mailer that calls Obama “no friend of Israel.”
• Photos of Obama with leaders of all three of Israel’s major political parties are featured on a mailer the Obama-Biden campaign is sending out in Florida, reports Lynn Sweet in the Chicago Sun-Times.
  
• Under the headline “How the GOP Scares Jews,” Slate examines the e-mail the Pennsylvania GOP sent out to Jewish voters suggesting that an Obama win could bring a second Holocaust.
  
• Michael Freund of the Jerusalem Post is disturbed that Israel’s foes are all rooting for Obama.
• Raphael Sonenshein speculates why recent polls are showing Jewish voters moving to Obama – and says Sarah Palin’s failure to name a single newspaper she reads couldn’t have helped the Republican ticket, in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal.
  
• A liberal pro-choice Jewish woman for McCain explains her reasons, at the American Thinker.
• “From Iran Agression to U.S. Recession: The Challenges Ahead”: Mona Charen, David Horowitz, Cliff May, Daniel Pipes and Michael Medved discuss the campaign’s issues, from a conservative perspective, in a forum sponsored by the Jewish Policy Center.
• Does the voiceover on this McCain ad about Obama and Iran sound “suspiciously Jewish,” Jeffrey Goldberg wonders at The Atlantic.
• Sen. John Cornyn’s campaign manager calls Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) “a nut.” His Democratic opponent Dennis Shulman’s daughter, a Capitol Hill aide, gets it on tape, according to The Hill (Fourth item down).
  
• John and Cindy McCain photographed with a McCippah.

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Political tidbits: Burns likes Obama’s stance on Iran, Fleischer calls Obama new Carter (UPDATED)

By Eric Fingerhut · October 28, 2008

• Former Bush administration official Nicholas Burns says Barack Obama is right: The United States should talk to adversaries like Iran, in Newsweek.
  
• Former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer calls Barack Obama “the Jimmy Carter of the 21st century” and brings up Jeremiah Wright when talking to Jewish voters in Las Vegas, reports the Wall Street Journal.
• In Israel, boxing promoter and Israel supporter Don King endorses Obama because he’ll speak softly but carry a big stick, according to the Jerusalem Post.
  
• The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg rips the “Jewish extremists” behind the distribution of the film “Obsession” in swing states.
• Stop using Hitler “as a political tool,” writes Brad Hirschfield on Beliefnet, in a response to that Pennsylvania e-mail.
  
• George Costanza – actually, Jason Alexander – campaigns for Obama in South Florida, writes the Huffington Post.
• Jewish Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle (R) is on the campaign trail too, for McCain, reports the Honolulu Advertiser.
• The Christian Science Monitor reports that Israelis are “uneasy” at the prospect of an Obama election.
• Young non-Orthodox Jews don’t give Israel high priority when voting for president, according to a new study reported in the Jerusalem Post.
  
• Sen. Ted Stevens’ (R-Alaska) conviction yesterday means Ethan Berkowitz’s chances in his race against longtime incumbent Republican Don Young, just got better. Here’s the New York Times noting Republicans bailing out on Young, who is implicated in the same scandal as Stevens.
• The New Republic wonders about the National Republican Sentorial Committee’s “Sex-and-Al Franken Obsession.” And even Norm Coleman says he was “astonished” by the comic-book style mailer and that any more copies should be collected and destroyed.



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Political tidbits: Palin greets Meridor, checking out the face of Obama’s Fla. campaign (UPDATED)

By Eric Fingerhut · October 27, 2008

• Sarah Palin meets with Israel Ambassador to the U.S. Sallai Meridor and tells him she looks “forward to ... working with your Jewish agency,” according to the Associated Press. (Is that some kind of reference to his old position as head of JAFI?) UPDATE: Here’s Palin’s full quote, and she was talking about Meridor’s time at the Jewish Agency for Israel: “I look forward to hearing about your work with the Jewish Agency and all the plans that we have. We’ll be working together.”
• Menachem Rosensaft charges the McCain-Palin campaign has resurrected McCarthyism, in the Huffington Post.
• A Jewish Republican state legislator in Ohio is attacked by his opponent for his military service in Iraq. Bob Belovich is charging that Josh Mandel “abandoned voters,” according to Joel Mowbray at Townhall.com.
• A phone banker for Obama tells the Huffington Post that she first tells Jewish voters that she understands their concerns about “voting for someone who is black” – and then finds Sarah Palin “is a great help in persuading” them to back Obama.
  
• The Sarasota Herald-Tribune profiles “Florida’s face for the Obama campaign,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz –and quotes her former professor predicting she’ll be the first Jewish president.
• Friends of Israel should vote for Barack Obama, writes Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) in the Jerusalem Post.
  
• The Jerusalem Post’s Caroline Glick writes that the prospect of an Obama-Tzipi Livni partnership is “enough to keep men and women of good faith up at night.”
• Delray Beach deli Poppie’s is the setting for today’s interviews of South Florida Jewish voters – who, just as the polls indicate, seem to be swinging towards Obama, according to the Toronto Star.
• Remember Cynthia McKinney, the congresswoman from Georgia whose father blames the “J-E-W-S” for her defeat in 2002? She’s running for president on the Green Party ticket, and is still talking about conspiracies, according to the Washington Post. She also got the endorsement of Roseanne Barr.
• Bradley Burston, in Haaretz, wants Sarah Palin to speak to liberals like they were “real Americans” too.
  
• The Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader talks to some Palin supporters from Oklahoma who think the vice presidential nominee is the “Deborah and Esther of our day” chosen “to defeat the modern enemy – Obama.”
• Jim Besser in The Jewish Week explores the reasons for the rise in Obama’s Jewish numbers.
  
• Rep. Robert Wexler tells the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne that McCain’s choice of Palin was an “unqualified negative” for the Republican in South Florida.
  
• There’s always a lot of criticism about the substance of American political campaigns, but YNet’s Yair Lapid is jealous while watching McCain and Obama – because Israeli political campaign are much less serious.
  
• Former Ehud Barak adviser Daniel Levy discusses what the 25th anniversary of the Hezbollah bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut can tell us about the presidential candidates.
• The Washington Post looks at who is behind the distribution of 28 million copies of the anti-radical Islam film “Obsession.”



John McCain is favored by a 12-point margin over Obama by Israelis, according to YNet.

• The New York Times endorses the “blind rabbi,” Dennis Shulman.

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Political tidbits: Obama up big among Fla. Jews, Shulman gaining on Garrett? (UPDATED)

By Eric Fingerhut · October 23, 2008

• Did the Great Schlep work? A new Quinnipiac poll has Florida Jews going 77-20 for Obama. That number would put Obama in line with Jewish support of the Democratic candidate in the last few presidential elections – and that’s in a state where a lot of resistance to Obama among Jewish voters had been reported a couple months ago. UPDATE: According to the Quinnipiac Polling Institute, the Jewish sample in the poll was 87 people, or 6 percent, which gives it a sizable margin of error of plus or minus 10.5 percent.
• “Blind Rabbi” Dennis Shulman and incumbent Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) have their first debate, and it’s not friendly. The candidates clashed over Israel and health care, reports the New Jersey Jewish News.
• Meanwhile, Politico speculates that the GOP is worried about losing Garrett’s seat, although a party spokeswoman denies it. For his part, Garrett just started running a television ad calling Shulman “too extreme for New Jersey” and sent out a mailer accusing Shulman of supporting “talking to terrorists.”
  Shulman’s campaign responded by calling Garrett “desperate” and comparing him to Karl Rove and Michelle Bachmann
  
• The head of Vote From Israel claims the deciding votes in a close presidential election could come from the 42,000 U.S. voters living in the Jewish state, reports the Jerusalem Post.
• Some Jewish Democrats complain to the Forward that the Conference of Presidents circulated invitations to John McCain’s “tele-town hall” meeting on Sunday.
  
• Howard Fineman blogs at Newsweek that Jewish donors frightened by Sarah Palin were one reason Barack Obama raised so much money in September.
• If John McCain won’t bring up Rev. Jeremiah Wright as a campaign issue, then Jonathan Mark of The Jewish Week doesn’t trust McCain to speak out against anti-Semitism as president.
  
• The economic crisis is dampening enthusiasm for McCain among the Russian Jewish community, reports The Jewish Week.
• And some in the Jewish community see the economic crisis forcing increased engagement with Iran under a new president, writes Jim Besser in The Jewish Week.
• The Forward reports on the Obama campaign’s courting of the Brooklyn Orthodox community at a sukkah in Williamsburg.
  
• Whitefish salad, nova, bagels, latkes and a couple black and white cookies were on the menu when Obama visited a South Florida deli with Reps. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) on Tuesday afternoon, reports Jake Tapper at ABC News.
• How does an editor decide whether to publish a letter that contains false information about the presidential candidates? The Jewish Week’s Gary Rosenblatt explores that issue.
  
• Larry Yudelson, in the Jerusalem Post, finds problems in McCain’s repetition of the phrase “Judeo-Christian values.”
• Eitan Haber, in YNet, is not excited, to say the least, about a Barack Obama presidency and it implications for Israel.
  
• Obama adviser Dan Kurtzer is optimistic about Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in an Obama presidency, according to the New Jersey Jewish News.
  
• Alan Dershowitz’s research assistant objects to the Harvard law professor’s endorsement of Obama, in the Jerusalem Post.
• Washington Jewish Week talks to some young Jews who made The Great Schlep.
• Could Wyoming have a Jewish member of Congress? Some polls say it’s possible, according to the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

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Vote of confidence for Shulman

By Eric Fingerhut · October 16, 2008

The Democratic Party likes the blind rabbi’s chances in New Jersey.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee this week upgraded Dennis Shulman from one of its “emerging races” to “Red to Blue,” meaning that the Democratic candidate in New Jersey’s Fifth District will get additional financial, communications and strategic support from the party in his race against three-term incumbent Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.). The change in designation also serves as an important signal to potential donors that the race is competitive and that their dollars could make a difference.

“Dennis Shulman is running a solid campaign and is committed to making things easier for middle class families in their districts,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), chair of the DCCC, in a statement. “With less than 21 days to make his case for change to voters, the Red to Blue program will give Shulman the financial and structural edge to be even more competitive in November.”

“Our grassroots campaign for change has been growing so rapidly in Northern New Jersey, and we welcome the additional support,” said Shulman in a statement released by his campaign.

In response, Garrett told the Newark Star-Ledger that Shulman is an “empty suit” and a “tax and spend pawn for Washington elites.”

Another Jewish Democratic challenger for U.S. Congress received a similar upgrade. Josh Segall, who is taking on three-term incumbent Rep. Mike Rogers (R) in Alabama’s Third District, also was moved from “emerging races” to “Red to Blue.”

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Political tidbits: Schlep talk, Coleman pulls negative ads

By Eric Fingerhut · October 13, 2008

• Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) says Yom Kippur convinced him to withdraw all his negative ads in his race against Al Franken.
  
• The New York Times looks at Andy Martin, the “man behind the whispers about Obama” who has a trail of anti-Jewish comments in his past.
  
• Newsweek says Sarah Palin is costing John McCain Jewish votes.
• “The People of the Button”: New York Rabbi Peter Schweitzer on the history of presidential campaign buttons in Hebrew, in the New York Times.
• Alan Dershowitz states that all the major party presidential and VP candidates are enthusiastic backers of Israel, so supporters of the Jewish state should base their voting decision instead on “more general considerarations” of who would be best for America and the world. The Green Party, though, is another story, he writes in the New York Daily News.
  
• British newspapers love “The Great Schlep”: The Times of London talks to Jews visiting their families in Florida. So does The Guardian.
  
• Haviv Rettig in the Jerusalem Post argues that the Jewish Council for Education and Research videos (those featuring Sarah Silverman and retired Israeli generals) are actually hurting Obama in the Jewish community – because they’re not taking Jewish concerns seriously.
• Jonathan Rosenblum tells bubbe and zaide to ignore the grandchildren, in the Jerusalem Post.
• The latest on this weekend’s courting the Ohio Jewish vote, from the Cleveland Plain-Dealer.
• What right-wing extremist groups has Todd Palin been “palling around” with? Menachem Rosensaft wants to know, in the Huffington Post.
  
• Liberals always threaten to move to Canada if a Republican wins the presidency? Where should conservatives threaten to go if Obama wins? Chris Wilson in Slate suggests Israel as one possibility.
• The Forward’s Brett Lieberman wonders if the Jewish community in Virginia could end up playing a crucial role in the election.
• Arab American Institute leader James Zogby criticizes McCain – and the Republican Jewish Coalition – for using “Arab” as a pejorative term.
• Rep. Robert Wexler is still a “heavy favorite” for re-election, but he has some “aggressive” opponents this year, writes the Palm Beach Post.
• Sarah Silverman talks to Keith Olbermann about “The Great Schlep,” but the best part of the interview is probably when Silverman tells Sarah Palin how she should have answered Katie Couric’s question about the newspapers and magazines she reads.

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Political tidbits: Hastings apologizes, more Jewish pro-Obama videos

By Eric Fingerhut · October 2, 2008

• Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) now says he regrets his comments last week about Sarah Palin, but maintains a McCain-Palin administration would be “anathema” to most African Americans and Jews.
• Georgetown University professor Jacques Berlinerblau, in the Washington Post’s On Faith blog, likes Sarah Silverman’s “The Great Schlep” video, but doubts it will have much impact on which way Florida votes.
  
• Jewish friends and supporters of Barack Obama, including Penny Pritzker and Abner Mikva, talk in this campaign video about why they support him .
  
• Benjamin Hartman in Ha’aretz says a debate in Israel last week between proxies for the American presidential candidates was a lot more exciting than the real candidates going at it the next evening. A question about Palin caused the greatest stir at that debate, according to CNS News.
  
• Jim Besser in The Jewish Week notes that the AJC survey found Obama surprisingly less popular among younger Jews than older Jews – although that number may be skewed by the strong support McCain enjoys in the Orthodox community.
• Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) says her opponent criticized her for coming home to celebrate Rosh Hashanah; Republican Tim Bee’s campaign said it was an innocent mixup and that they meant no harm.
• Obama adviser Dennis Ross tells the New Jersey Jewish News that his candidate would “change the dynamic” in the Middle East.
• Ed Koch recounts his trip to South Florida over the weekend to campaign for Obama.
  
• Doug Bloomfield, in the Washington Jewish Week, says John McCain’s no-earmark policy would be bad for Israel and the Jews.
  
• David Benkof in the Jerusalem Post argues that Jews shouldn’t use the Supreme Court as an excuse not to vote for McCain.
• Gawker tallies up how Jewish members of Congress voted on the bailout.
• Has Congress always taken the High Holidays off? No, it’s a fairly recent custom, reports the Associated Press.
  
• Sarah Palin has used Queen Esther as a role model, but is she really more like David battling Goliath? Mark Joseph on FoxNews.com thinks so.
• The Boston Globe wonders whether Joe Biden’s propensity to speak from “the kishkas” will get him in trouble tonight.
  
• Jon Stewart and “The Daily Show” worked on Rosh Hashanah, and he thinks Congress should have worked, too.
  
• Andy Borowitz has some fun with Bill Clinton’s announcement that he wouldn’t be campaigning until after the Jewish High Holy Days.

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DCCC chairman: RJC “shameful”

By Eric Fingerhut · September 23, 2008

The chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee called the Republican Jewish Coalition “shameful” for the way the group has tried to use Israel “as a wedge issue.”

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said the organziation was breaking with a tradition “that has united Democrats and Republicans since Harry Truman.” He spoke at a reception for members of Congress at the National Jewish Democratic Council’s Washington Conference.

Van Hollen did come under criticism from pro-Israel constituents in his suburban Washington, D.C. district two years ago after he wrote a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telling her she should have told Israel to limit its attacks during the Lebanon War – although he also said that Israel was “justified” in defending itself against Hezbollah.

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Political Tidbits: Everyone is still talking about Sarah Palin

By Eric Fingerhut · September 15, 2008

• The Washington Post editorial page says Palin’s refusal, in her ABC interview, to “second guess” Israel about a potential Iran strike leaves a big question unanswered – would she permit Israeli forces to fly through U.S.-controlled airspace to make such an attack?
  
• MSNBC’s Chris Matthews didn’t like Palin’s “second guess” answer, but was he reporting her response correctly? Newsbusters doesn’t think so.
  
• Robert Schlesinger of U.S. News and World Report blogged that Palin’s constant repetition of “second guess” reminded him of a famous scene in the classic film “This Is Spinal Tap.”
• Beth Reinhard writes that Jews should “demand” to know more about Sarah Palin’s views on Jews for Jesus and Israel.
• Frank Rich in the New York Times argues that Palin’s use of a quote by the anti-Semitic Westbrook Pegler in the “most chilling passage” of her convention speech demonstrates the Republicans’ return to the “vitriolic animus of right-wing populism.”
  
• The McClatchy News Service examines what’s “on the record” about Palin’s religous beliefs.
  
• ABC’s Jake Tapper has news of “The Great Schlep” for Obama, along with more on Michelle Obama’s rabbi cousin.
• Editor & Publisher investigates why copies of the anti-radical Islam DVD “Obsession” are being inserted into newspapers in “swing states.”
• Edward Luce of the Financial Times attends a tai chi class in Miami Beach to find undecided Jewish voters – who raise questions about Palin and Barack Obama.
  
• Joseph Epstein, in the Wall Street Journal, discusses about why he’s a Jewish Republican – which he calls thinking “outside the lox.”
  
• “If there’s any year when a blind rabbi is going to get elected to Congress, this figures to be the one,” writes Peter Applebome in the New York Times about New Jersey congressional challenger Dennis Shulman.
  
• Israel’s chief negotiator on the Oslo Accords, Uri Savir, tells the Jerusalem Post that the “peace process” would be better served by Barack Obama than by John McCain.
• Two St. Paul Jews, Paul and Paula Maccabee, criticize the Republican Jewish Coalition’s ad campaign with an op-ed in the American Jewish World newspaper.
• The Republican Jewish Coalition’s blog is defending that John McCain ad claiming Barack Obama supported “sex education” for kindergarteners, even though nonpartisan observers say it’s false.

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Cohen accepts Jesus - as a metaphor

By Ron Kampeas · September 10, 2008

Looks like U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) took the Christ talk to heart. Last month, the Memphis lawmaker trounced an opponent in the Democratic primaries after she failed to convince Cohen’s majority black constituency that he wasn’t “Christian” enough to represent them.

Cohen, among the first Jewish Dems to endorse the presidential candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), took aim Tuesday at Republican vice presidential pick Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin, who has mocked Obama’s background as a community organizer. Cohen, echoing a trope that arose almost as soon as Palin (and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani) initiated the dig last week, argued that Jesus might have been considered a community organizer - and pointed out that Pontius Pilate was a governor.

That’s already raised hackles among Republicans who are crying religious bias. And considering the hits Cohen took, he should be careful with religious analogies - this is the ad his opponent ran against him.

Republicans should be careful crying bias, though: the legitimate point Palin and Giuliani were making, that Obama lacks executive experience, might have effectively been made picking at any of the many jobs on the candidate’s resume: Law professor (12 years) state legislator (eight years) U.S. Senator (four years) law firm associate (11 years) author (two best-sellers.) Yet Giuliani and Palin somehow picked the one job, community organizer (three years) that screams “African American.”

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