JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Wasserman Schultz smacks down Palin

By Ron Kampeas · October 30, 2008

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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: Gallup poll reactions, Palin wig big in Brooklyn

By Eric Fingerhut · October 24, 2008

• A McCain supporter changes his mind in the voting booth and casts his ballot for Obama after talking to a group of Jewish women who convince him how historic Obama’s election would be. He also loans them his Dale Earnhardt jacket so they can cover up their Obama shirts and vote, according to Politico.
• Looking at yesterday’s Gallup poll, Shmuel Rosner, in Commentary, analyzes why Obama has gained ground in the Jewish community. Meanwhile, Salon’s Glenn Greenwald claims that Obama’s Jewish problem was a “baseless myth.”
• Should the Great Schlep have gone to Hillels? Jacques Berlinerblau wonders after noting that the Gallup poll found older Jews support Obama in slightly bigger numbers than younger Jews.
• Did Republicans, as Colin Powell charged on “Meet the Press,” spread the “Obama is a Muslim” rumor? Steven Waldman looks into that question in the Wall Street Journal, and finds that while John McCain is innocent, others aren’t.
  
• Hilary Leila Krieger looks at Obama’s Jewish political connections in the Jerusalem Post.
• Dennis Ross talks to Haaretz about being a surrogate for Obama in Florida.
• Just like in their television ad, the Republican Jewish Coalition’s new newspaper ad uses Hillary Clinton to attack Barack Obama, comparing Clinton and John McCain’s positions to the Democratic nominee’s stances on three issues and finding Obama the odd man out.
• The NJDC’s Aaron Keyak notes on the Huffington Post that Sarah Palin was campaigning with the senator who blocked a bill tightening sanctions on Iran.
• Jerry Stiller, Rhea Pearlman, Carl Reiner, Danny DeVito: They’re all old sitcom stars, and they’ve all cut pro-Obama ads for the Jewish Alliance for Change.
  
• Surrogates for the candidates debate at Jewish forums in Philadelphia and Palm Beach County.
  
• A London writer spends some time with some New Jersey Obama supporters who are worried the news is too good for their candidate.
• The Sarah Palin wig is a big hit in Brooklyn among Orthodox women, according to the New York Daily News.

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Breaking the 70 percent barrier

By Eric Fingerhut · October 23, 2008

First a poll of Floridians and now a national poll shows Barack Obama is making significant gains among Jews.

A Gallup October tracking poll found Obama leading John McCain among registered Jewish voters by a margin of 74-22 percent. Obama’s share of the vote in the monthly Gallup survey has risen five points since September and 13 points since July. The October poll was based on 564 interviews conducted Oct. 1-21 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percent.

In addition, a Qunnipiac University poll of Florida voters found Obama winning 77 percent of the Jewish vote, compared to just 20 percent for McCain. That poll, taken Oct. 16-21, surveyed 87 Jewish voters and had a margin of error of plus or minus 10.5 points.

The polls suggest that after months of hovering around 60 percent, Obama appears to be in striking distance of the 75-80 percent of the Jewish vote won by the three previous Democratic nominees.

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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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Schlepping with the pro-Obama schleppers

By Ami Eden · October 20, 2008

JTA’s Ben Harris was on the ground in Florida for “The Great Schlep.” Here’s his video report:

Here’s his companion article on the senior vote in Florida, and whether race will end up being as big a factor as some observers think:

‘Schlep’ puts focus on Jewish seniors, race issue
By Benjamin Harris
BOCA RATON, Fla. (JTA) – Fred Wolff is pretty explicit in laying out the reason why he won’t support Barack Obama on Nov. 4.

A survivor of the Dachau concentration camp who came to the United States as a teenager, Wolff told JTA he typically favors Republican candidates. This year he would have preferred former governors Mike Huckabee of Arkansas or Mitt Romney of Massachusetts.

But despite his misgivings about John McCain, the Republican nominee, Wolff said there’s one reason he would never consider supporting Obama.

“I think that many of the blacks – I was going to say shvartzes, but I’ll say blacks – many of the blacks are anti-Semitic,” Wolff said. “I’m not going to vote for the black guy. No, never. I don’t want him. I don’t like the crowd that surrounds him. They may be quiet right now, and they may be even hiding in the bushes. But you wait, if he wins, they’re going to come out.”

While Obama has labored for months to beat back false claims that he is a Muslim and soft on Israel, the talk as the election heads into its final weeks has focused on the one aspect of the Democrat’s biography he is powerless to change: his skin color. And with polls showing Obama lagging in Jewish support behind earlier Democratic presidential candidates, concern among some of his supporters has grown that older Jewish voters, clustered in critical swing states and besieged by advertising stoking concerns about his position on Jewish issues, could tip the balance to McCain.

It was precisely this worry that led a new pro-Obama group, JewsVote.org, to urge young Jews to visit Florida over Columbus Day weekend to lobby their grandparents on Obama’s behalf. The effort, known as “The Great Schlep,” received a huge boost last month from foul-mouthed comedian Sarah Silverman, who appeared in an Internet video touting the Schlep that has been viewed more than 7 million times.

Following in the footsteps of Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” and several coventional media outlets, Silverman painted older Jewish Floridians as balking at backing Obama because of his race.

The data suggest that such concerns might be overblown.

A recent survey by the American Jewish Committee found that Obama’s support was greater among older Jews than younger ones, a finding that some observers have said is too unbelievable to be true. On the ground in Florida, many grandparents of “schleppers” told JTA that they were leaning toward the Democratic candidate anyway, even before their grandchildren paid them an unexpected – if highly appreciated – visit.

“I think that elders are getting a bad rap with the assumption that they are going to allow racism to cloud their judgment about what really is the best choice for our country and our interest in being advocates for Israel and the Jewish people,” said Rabbi Dayle Friedman, who directs a center for Jewish aging at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia and is a vice chair of Rabbis for Obama. “My experience with elders is that they are far more open minded than people give them credit for.”

Several surveys of American Jews have shown Obama hovering at around 60 percent, about 10 points below where John Kerry was polling at a similar point in the presidential race four years ago.

“Over the years, there’s been some slippage in the numbers in terms of support for the Democrats,” said Ari Wallach, the co-founder of JewsVote and its parent organization, the Jewish Council for Education and Research.

The Great Schlep is “a way of ensuring that that does not continue, not only down here in Florida but across the country,” he said.

The Obama campaign, which drew a small army of Jewish volunteers to Florida thanks to the Silverman video, dismissed the sluggish poll numbers and expressed confidence that Obama would top Kerry’s figure of 76 percent of Jewish support.

“We don’t have a Jewish problem, the Republicans have an election problem,” Halie Soifer, the campaign’s Jewish vote director in Florida, told a group of Jewish volunteers from across the country on Oct. 10.

Soifer said McCain’s dip in the polls is giving Republicans nightmares, prompting them to hurl every slur imaginable in an effort to reverse the decline. And while she acknowledged that race may play a role in the minds of the Jewish voters she has targeted, insinuations about Obama’s background are being heard less and less.

“We are seeing a surge in support,” Soifer said. “I go to condos where I used to go a few months ago. And there was skepticism at that time. They didn’t know enough about Senator Obama. And now people just want to know how they can help.”

Among those former skeptics are Kenny and Selma Furst, lifelong Democrats and residents of one of the mythic “condos” and retirement communities that dot the South Florida landscape. Selma Furst had heard all the rumors about Obama’s religion and his stance on Israel, but there was one thing that really made her uncomfortable.

“If I may say the color wasn’t what I really wanted,” said Selma Furst. “And I just thought that no, I don’t think he’s going to be good. And I wasn’t too crazy about his wife.”

The Fursts’ grandchildren are fervent Obama supporters, and through e-mails and phone calls they were eventually able to sway their grandparents. So much so that Furst organized a Sunday afternoon meeting at their retirement community in Tamarac so their grandson, schlepper Mike Bender from Los Angeles, could address their friends.

By the end of Bender’s Oct. 12 speech, the 100 or so elderly voters were chanting “Yes, we can,” the unofficial slogan of the Obama campaign.

But even before hearing Bender’s pitch, the bulk of the crowd appeared to be solidly backing Obama. Several said that if Jewish voters had any fears about Obama, they were trumped by concerns about McCain’s choice of running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

“I wouldn’t vote for Sarah Palin if I didn’t vote at all,” said Estelle Zucker, a resident of Kings Point in Tamarac. “I think McCain made a big mistake by taking her.”

A lifelong Democrat, Zucker confessed to being on the fence in this election for the first time in her life. Obama’s “friends,” Zucker said, are anti-Semitic. She also worries about his position on Iran and Israel.

“That’s why I can’t go full-heartedly into this election, but I definitely will not vote for McCain,” Zucker said. “I don’t like Sarah Palin. She could be very nice – I like nice ladies – but I don’t like what she stands for.”

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Political tidbits: Obama effigy found in Ohio, McCain townhall reaction

By Eric Fingerhut · October 20, 2008

• A man hangs an Obama effigy in his front yard – with a Star of David on the top of his head – and freely admits he doesn’t want a black man as president. The Huffington Post has the video from a local TV station in Ohio.
• John McCain isn’t going to bring up Obama’s relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but won’t ask the Republican Jewish Coalition to stop putting him in their ads, according to Newsweek.
  
• McCain turned down an opportunity from Rabbi Shlomo Riskin yesterday to talk about Wright at a Jewish “tele-town hall meeting.”
• M.J. Rosenberg rips Riskin for spending years living in Israel and yet presuming to advise U.S. presidential candidates on strategy, at TPM Cafe.
• Jim Besser of The Jewish Week felt the McCain meeting seemed too staged.
• Menachem Rosensaft on McCain’s “pals” like Phil Gramm and Randy Scheunemann, in the Huffington Post.
• Here’s the National Jewish Democratic Council’s newest print ad, making the case that Obama-Biden will protect Israel and achieve energy independence.
  
• And here’s the Republican Jewish Coalition’s new television ad, using Hillary Clinton to criticize Obama for saying he’d meet with the leaders of rogue states.
  
• Every church and synagogue in the United States is going to receive the anti-radical Islam film Obsession, according to Marketwatch. It’s coming enclosed with a new right-wing, anti-gay marriage and anti-abortion publication called The Judeo-Christian View, which is backed by a couple Orthodox rabbis and charges that Obama’s support of partial-birth abortion is akin biblically to child sacrifice.
• Daniel Pipes plays the Muslim card, claiming that Obama wouldn’t get a security clearance if he becomes president.
  
• Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) tells CBS’s “Face The Nation” that Sarah Palin has “really disturbed” the Jewish community in Florida, according to UPI.
  
• Richard Heideman and Steve Grossman face off as surrogates for McCain and Obama in Boston, reports the Boston Globe.
  
• Adam Brickley, one of Sarah Palin’s earliest fans in the lower 48, has gone from being an evangelical Christian to a “messianic Jew,” notes the New Yorker in a Palin profile.
  
• Our daily look at the Florida Jewish vote today comes from the Chicago Tribune.
• The Jewish Press endorses John McCain.
  
• “Family Guy” briefly compared McCain and Palin to Nazis last night, according to Hollywood Today.
  
• Sarah Silverman talks to Katie Couric.

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Trying to tie Jesse to Barack

By Eric Fingerhut · October 17, 2008

Jesse Jackson may have denied saying that Zionists control American foreign policy , but that didn’t stop the McCain campaign from using the remarks to attack what they called Barack Obama’ “poor” record on Israel.

In a conference call with reporters on Wednesday afternoon, McCain Florida Jewish outreach campaign co-chairs Rep. Adam Hasner and Rep. Ellyn Bogdanoff, and top McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann argued that Jackson fit a “pattern” of “advisers” and “associates” of Obama who they said are not strong friends of Israel – from Samantha Power to Robert Malley to Gen. Merrill McPeak

“Sen. Obama does not have a record that can give Jewish voters comfort,” said Hasner.

“You have to judge him by the company he keeps,” said Bogdanoff.

But Jackson isn’t an adviser to Obama, and the two hardly seem to have a warm relationship – considering Jackson threatened to cut Obama’s private parts off earlier this year. Asked why they kept referring to “advisors” or “associates” in regard to Jackson when they don’t appear to be particularly close, Bogdanoff said that Obama has “had a close relationship” with Jackson, claiming that the civil rights leader had helped Obama in his rise through the Chicago political world.

Ryan Lizza’s lengthy articleon Obama’s rise in Chicago politics from this summer mentions Jackson twice – once to note that Jackson’s daughter is a close friend of Michelle Obama’s, and the other recounting that Jackson was the featured speaker at an anti-war rally Obama also spoke at before the Iraq war began.

Scheunemann then responded that the campaign had, in a press release earlier that day, merely called Jackson a “supporter” of Obama.

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Political tidbits: Obama campaign won’t debate RJC, low turnout for the Schlep

By Eric Fingerhut · October 16, 2008

• The Obama campaign has decided its representatives won’t debate Republican Jewish Coalition officials, because they’re tired of the RJC’s negative ads, according to the L.A. Jewish Journal.
• CNN has the story of a “great schlepper” who ended up not only convincing his South Florida grandparents to support Barack Obama, but also spoke to more than 100 of their neighbors.
• Meanwhile, the London Daily Telegraph says only 200 people actually schelpped, and many found their grandparents were already supporting Obama.
  
• And some of Obama’s senior staffers are schlepping to Florida for the next few weeks – a signal the campaign thinks it can win the state, according to a Miami television station.
  
• The Jerusalem Post reports that Jesse Jackson says his comments on “Zionists” controlling American foreign policy were distorted – and that the Obama campaign has distanced itself from those remarks.
• Jewish historian Jonathan Sarna talks about the election and the Jewish vote with JUF News.
• The L.A. Jewish Journal interviews Obama’s California strategist, Mitchell Schwartz.
  
• The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg blogs that the angry crowds at McCain-Palin rallies remind him of those demonstrating against Yitzhak Rabin in the months before he was assassinated.
• Michael Oren, in Forbes, said it was “astonishing” to discover that the presidential candidates “differ significantly on virtually every issue” related to Israel, except for their “common commitment to Israel and the search for peace.”
• Newsweek’s Howard Fineman has decided the many polls of Jewish voters are wrong. How? He surveyed his high-school friends from Pittsburgh, gets a 9-1 margin for Obama and declares that non-Orthodox Jews are going to vote in much bigger numbers for the Democrat than everyone thinks.
• Campaigning for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton tells a Philadelphia JCC crowd that the economic crisis is heartbreaking, reports the AP.
• Bloomberg on the campaigns seeking American voters in Israel.
  
• Max Blumenthal and David Niewert at Salon claim Sarah Palin has ties to some radical right-wingers.
• M.J. Rosenberg wonders what Sarah Palin meant when she campaigned to be “Wasilla’s first Christian mayor” – since the incumbent was a Lutheran but his last name was Stein.
• Charley Levine, in the Jerusalem Post, would like to see a McCain-Biden ticket.
• Campaiging for John McCain, Joe Lieberman tells Ohio voters that he might even vote for Obama one day – but not this year, according to the AP. And he tells the Forward that he’s “at peace” with his decision to become an independent and back the GOP presidential candidate.
  
• More on the battle for Florida Jewish voters, from the Chicago Tribune.
• Ben Shapiro, on Townhall.com, challenges Alan Dershowitz to a debate over Dershowitz’s claim that both candidates are equal supporters of Israel.

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