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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.

3 Comments | Share This | ads, Barack Obama, Congressional races, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida, Iran, Israel, John McCain, Local races, New Jersey, New York, polls, Presidential Race, Sarah Palin, Tidbits

McCain talks Palin and Jerusalem, but not Wright

By Eric Fingerhut · October 19, 2008

John McCain called Sarah Palin a “threat to the left-wing feminist liberal movement” and passed up an opportunity to criticize Barack Obama’s relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright in a “tele-town hall” with Jewish leaders and supporters Sunday morning.

McCain also discussed his views on the status of Jerusalem, saying in his opening statement that “Jerusalem remains undivided” and then repeating twice that the city “is undivided and must remain the capital of Israel” – seeming to avoid a future commitment on the city’s unity by only utilizing the present tense. He added that he would “never press Israel into making concessions that would endanger its security.”

Then, at the end of the call, he asked Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who had introduced McCain on the call, to “mention again our view” on the status of Jerusalem. Lieberman noted the trip he and McCain had taken to the Jewish state in March, in which they talked about that issue with Israeli leaders, and said Jerusalem’s status was one of the “matters to be discussed between Israelis and Palestinians if there’s ever genuine negotiations.” Lieberman then added that McCain knows the “historic Jewish claim” to the city and “it’s clear he will not be included in efforts to divide Jerusalem.”

(Taken as a whole, this appears to mean that while McCain would not support a division of Jerusalem, he also would allow the Israelis to make their own decision on the issue in any future negotiations. This is similar to Obama’s position. The Democrat originally told AIPAC that Jerusalem “must remain undivided,” then the next day said that it should be a matter left to negotiations.)

Lieberman did emphasize that McCain has promised to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem “as soon as he becomes president,” a pledge Obama has not made.

McCain was asked by American-born Israeli Rabbi Shlomo Riskin why he hadn’t raised Obama’s close association with the controversial Wright, which Riskin said he found much more problematic than Obama’s affiliations with unrepentant terrorist William Ayers or ACORN – which has been accused of voter registration fraud. McCain responded that the “issue of Pastor Wright is pretty well known by the American people.” On the other hand, he said, “We need to know more about” the Ayers and ACORN matters.

In response to questions about Palin, the Republican nominee said his vice presidential selection threatened the “left-wing feminist liberal movement” because she’s the mother of five children as well as a “reformer, a conservative, a tax-cutter and a spending cutter.”

Lieberman, calling her “very able,” then joined in to say that while Palin “holds some positions on social issues which, I’ll be honest, I don’t agree with,” she “holds them in a very respectful way.”

“She respects people who come to the other position,” he said, and “I find her not to be ideological in a rigid sense. She’s a practical problem solver.”

He added that the vice presidential nominee “has a deep love for the state of Israel” equal to McCain’s.

The “tele-town hall” was billed as a meeting with Jewish leaders from various organizations, but judging from the questioners it appeared the audience included many backers of the candidate. Just one of the five questioners identified himself as being affiliated with a Jewish organization (one questioner said he worked for Agudath Israel) and at least four of the questions came from men and women who identified themselves as supporters of McCain.

3 Comments | Share This | Barack Obama, Israel, Jerusalem, Joe Lieberman, John McCain, Presidential Race, Sarah Palin

Dueling sukkah events

By Eric Fingerhut · October 16, 2008

Now that the debates are over, the sukkah portion of the presidential campaign begins in just a few hours. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) will both be visiting sukkot this evening on behalf of their party’s presidential candidates.

First, at 6:15 p.m., Nadler will speak about the Obama-Biden ticket to invited guests from the Satmar community in Williamsburg, N.Y. at an event hosted by Rabbi Joseh Menczer.

Thirty minutes later, Graham, a top surrogate of John McCain, will be dropping by the sukkah of the leader of the largest pro-Israel PAC in the country. NORPAC president Ben Chouake, along with his wife Esther, will be hosting Graham at their Englewood, N.J., sukkah.

0 Comments | Share This | Israel, John McCain, New Jersey, Presidential Race

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.

0 Comments | Share This | ads, California, debates, Florida, Israel, Joe Biden, Joe Lieberman, John McCain, Ohio, Presidential Race, RJC, Sarah Palin, Tidbits

Some trims made to pro-Obama video

By Eric Fingerhut · October 13, 2008

The pro-Barack Obama video featuring retired Israeli security officials is about a minute and a half shorter. That’s because two of the participants have been edited out of the film.

Former Mossad director Ephraim Halevy and retired Gen. Uzi Dayan had complained that they were not aware that interviews they had done this summer about the U.S. presidential candidates would be used in a video endorsing Obama. They were among seven retired generals and intelligence officials who appeared in the Jewish Council for Education and Research-distributed video.

Halevy and Dayan no longer appear on the video available at JCER’s Website, and the organization confirmed Monday that the two men were removed from it last week.

1 Comment | Share This | ads, Barack Obama, Israel, Presidential Race

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.

0 Comments | Share This | ads, Alaska, Barack Obama, Congressional races, Florida, Israel, Joe Biden, Norm Coleman, Ohio, Presidential Race, RJC, Sarah Palin, Tidbits, Virginia

Political tidbits: More guilt by association, a plea to stop talking about Israel

By Eric Fingerhut · October 10, 2008

• More guilt by association from the GOP, as he chairman of the Palm Beach Republican Party is e-mailing around a video of an eight-month old speech in which Louis Farrakhan calls Barack Obama “the messiah.” Obama already responded to this endorsement in a debate during the primaries: After some badgering from Tim Russert and Hillary Clinton saying that simply denouncing Farrakhan wasn’t enough, Obama said he would “reject” the Nation of Islam leader’s support.
• Some guilt by association for McCain and Palin, from Menachem Rosensaft in the Huffington Post.
  
• From Jesse Kornbluth in the Huffington Post ... Yom Kippur letter to Joe Lieberman’s rabbis, urging them to “talk to Sen. Lieberman about the hatred the McCain-Palin campaign is encouraging” – and complete with somewhat over-the-top allusions to Kristallnacht.
• Bradley Burston, in Ha’aretz, accuses Sarah Palin for stirring up prejudice and hatred when she talks about Obama.
• In the National Review ... Mona Charen argues that Sarah Silverman’s “Great Schlep” video is just one more example of Jews substituting liberalism for their religion – and blames the New York Times for going along with it.
• Shmuel Rosner, in Slate, urges the candidates to stop talking about Israel so much.
• Politico reports that John McCain didn’t disclose his affiliation with the U.S. Council for World Freedom as a freshman congressman; his campaign says he didn’t have to report the connection.
• In the L.A. Jewish Journal ... former AIPAC head Morris Amitay lays out why he supportd McCain.
• And former top Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross does the same for Obama.
  
• The Jewish Week talks to some undecided Jewish women about Sarah Palin.
  
• The Christian Science Monitor weighs in on Obama’s “struggles to attract Jewish voters.”
• A report on Obama’s Jewish outreach efforts in Pennsylvania, from the Jewish Exponent.
• Michael Gerson in the Washington Post on the importance of the Iran threat in making one’s choice for president.
• The National Jewish Democratic Council claims the Republican Jewish Coalition is lying in its new ad when it says Obama would be willing to meet personally with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Actually, the NJDC is wrong, because Obama did say that, at the YouTube debate last year (the questioner even puts a photo of Ahmadinejad on the screen when he asks the question) and he said it again two months later after the Iranian president spoke at Columbia University.

7 Comments | Share This | ads, Barack Obama, Florida, Israel, John McCain, NJDC, Presidential Race, Primaries, RJC, Sarah Palin, Tidbits

Swing states target of Jewish outreach this weekend

By Eric Fingerhut · October 10, 2008

With less than a month to go before Election Day, Barack Obama’s campaign is sponsoring Jewish outreach events in three important swing states this weekend – and that doesn’t even include “The Great Schlep.”

At noon at a Philadelphia Jewish community center, Pa. Gov. Ed Rendell (D) and U.S. Reps. Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) are among the speakers at an event billed as a discussion on “Senator Barack Obama, Israel and the 2008 election.” The event follows on the heels of a parade of Jewish surrogates who fanned out to speak all day last Sunday, including former New York Mayor Ed Koch, U.S. Reps. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) and Sander Levin (D-Mich.) and Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.)

At 4 p.m. this afternoon in Delray Beach, Fla., the campaign will be providing “Jewish outreach training” at its S. Florida headquarters. While “The Great Schlep” is an independent effort and the Obama campaign is not permitted to coordinate with its sponsor, the Jewish Council for Education and Research, South Florida campaign spokesman Bobby Gravitz said that “we are hoping folks who are travelling this weekend” and in town by this afternoon would be interested in attending. He said Florida Jewish outreach director Halie Soifer would be discussing Obama’s positions on the Middle East, and also conduct a question and answer session.

And on Sunday at 5 p.m., Obama foreign policy adviser Dennis Ross, U.S. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Carl Levin, again, will be part of what the campaign is calling one of its largest Jewish outreach events of the year in Cleveland.

Recent polls have Obama competitive, and in some cases leading, McCain in all three states – which George W. Bush won in 2000 and 2004. And all three are considered to have Jewish populations large enough to possibly make a difference in an extremely close race.

But not all the Obama activity is in swing states. Koch, U.S. Rep. Steve Rothman (D-N.J.) and former U.S. ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer will hold a town hall meeting to discuss “Why Obama is best for Israel and America” in Paramus, N.J., a state that is widely considered to be a safe blue state this year.

16 Comments | Share This | Barack Obama, Florida, Israel, John McCain, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Presidential Race, Uncategorized

Unsolicited advice to the next president

By Lisa Hostein · October 8, 2008

Both presidential candidates made the requisite references to Israel in their debate last night. As they ponder more thoughtful policies in the Middle East, here comes analyst Martin Kramer with some unsolicited advice: Focus on Iran and the Persian Gulf and don’t worry too much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

1 Comment | Share This | Iran, Israel, Presidential Race

Political tidbits: Gibbs takes on Hannity, another Jewish pro-Obama video

By Eric Fingerhut · October 8, 2008

• Obama adviser Robert Gibbs took on Fox News host Sean Hannity last night over his use of anti-Semite Andy Martin to make wild claims about Barack Obama.
• The Sun-Sentinel has more on Martin, while the New York Times interviews Martin, who denies being an anti-Semite and says it’s a “peripheral” issue.
  
• And Glen Greenwald in Salon has even more details on Martin and criticizes the ADL for not speaking out about Martin.
• A powerhouse political panel tomorrow at Temple Rodef Shalom in Northern Virginia: Chuck Todd, Matt Brooks and Matt Dorf at the afternoon break in services, reports the Washington Post.
• The Sun-Sentinel has details on Joe Lieberman and Ed Koch stumping for Jewish votes in South Florida.
• Marty Peretz, in the Jerusalem Post, on why there are “so few Jewish Republicans.”
• Another pro-Obama video – this time from a Orthodox Jewish mom who lived in Jerusalem for five years.
  
• The Washington Post finds an article in a newsletter from the U.S. Council for World Freedom that belittles critics of Ronald Reagan’s 1985 Bitburg trip. John McCain says he resigned from the group in 1984, but was still on the letterhead in 1986 – and attended the group’s dinner in 1985.
• Anat Hakim explains why she schlepped north to convince her family to vote for McCain, in the Los Angeles Times.
• Political pundit Larry Sabato thinks Sarah Silverman’s profanity in her Great Schlep video may backfire on Obama – but adds that he still finds Jack Benny funny.
• Two Israeli pro-Obama videos are deemed a “de-schlep-tion” by Abraham Katsman and Kory Bardash in the Jerusalem Post.

0 Comments | Share This | Barack Obama, Ed Koch, Israel, Joe Lieberman, John McCain, Presidential Race, RJC, Tidbits