Obama's National Jewish Support Continues to Erode

Fresh off the big Democratic party loss in NY-9, Gallup has shared its latest national polling data on Jews with Poltico which shows Obama's support in the Jewish community continues to erode.


Obama’s approval rating among Jewish Americans is down to 55 percent - a five point drop from June and a 13 point drop from May which is when he made the demand that Israel use the 1949 Armistice lines as the starting point for negotiations instead of as the goal of negotiations. 

Four out of 10 Jewish Americans currently disapprove of Obama, according to polling data provided to POLITICO by Gallup, which has yet to post the numbers on its website.

This 40 percent disapproval rating is 8 percent higher than the 32 percent disapproval rating among Jewish Americans that was last reported by Gallup in June.

Together, the rise in disapproval and dip in approval ratings are a net negative 11 point downturn for Obama among Jews.

When the June numbers were released, most pundits felt it was meaningless that Jews would never abandon the Democratic Party not even to the extent they did with Jimmy Carter (who got 45% of the Jewish Vote in 1980).  Last week as attention turned to the Turner-Weprin race the scuttlebutt changed. It seemed as if pundits were now predicting that Jewish voters were going to abandon Obama in droves and the only Jewish votes Obama will get are David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel.
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Truth be told the pundits were wrong in June and are wrong today. Here are the facts:

• It is true that Jewish voters are angry with Obama's anti-Israel policies, but it is not true that Jews base their votes on that one issue.  If that was the case, George Bush would have gotten much more that 24% of the vote when he ran against the weak-on-terror John Kerry in 2004. Bush was probably the most pro-Israel President in US history. 

•  Even when Jewish voters rejected Jimmy Carter, it was not solely because of his stance on Israel. The economy was in the crapper big-time inflation and unemployment were both high.

• A close look at the NY-9 race shows that Israel wasn't the only reason for the switch of the Jewish vote.  It took at least one additional issue on top of Israel for the voters to switch.

When push comes to shove the fate of the Jewish vote in 2012 depends on three things, the economy, Israel and who the GOP offers.  Two of the three (the economy and Obama's anti-Israel policies) will not  improve before election day. The third is left to be seen. A candidate seen as moderate such as a Romney or a Gingrich would probably be the most attractive to the Jewish Vote.

A big segment of the Jewish Vote is ripe for the picking, that doesn't mean they are going anywhere.  Depending on who the Republicans pick, I would suspect that the GOP garners between 35% (what Nixon got in 1972) and 40% of the Jews (what Reagan got in 1980).  Which is a huge gain but not the total abandonment predicted in some circles.

Frankly, the bigger danger for the Democratic Party is the shift to the GOP is accompanied by disillusionment, the Jews stay home.  In that case it not only causes the President to lose votes, but also the candidates down the ticket.

Even if a major segment of liberal Jews stay home ord vote GOP,  the entire Jewish population represents only 2.2% of the U.S. population what kind of impact could they have? (NY-9 is 40% Jewish).  In a close election, a shift of Jewish votes could lose key battleground states for Obama.  States where there is a relatively larger Jewish population such as

Other states with a big Jewish populations New York, Massachusetts and California wouldn't shift from Obama even if he was caught in bed with the proverbial "dead woman or live sheep."  And as a favorite son of Illinois  he can count on that state's electoral votes.  But a  shift of 73 electoral votes, 20% of his 2008 total of 365 will make it much more difficult for President Obama to be reelected.

In summary, 2012 will see a shift in Jewish voting patterns, but not a total abandonment (and not only because of Israel). While a small percentage of total voters, a change in a few key battle ground states  may lead to some blue states moving into the red column and the presidency shifting party's. But to suggest a total shift or an effect in more than a few states (and only if those states are close) is being irresponsible.

Dems Beginning To Fear That Obama is Unelectable

According to a report in the Daily Telegraph, many Democrats are beginning to wake up and smell the lousy economy. Not only are the party insiders beginning to doubt Obama's re-election prospects but they are beginning to reconsider whether Hillary Clinton would have made a superior president. In the words of the great political commentator Homer Simpson "Doh!"

One big reason is for the party malaise was Obama's performance during the debt ceiling debate. The party faithful was upset that the President agreed to widespread cuts in government spending without winning any revenue increases in exchange.

Finding it hard to defend his often listless and repetitive performances, Democratic strategists and commentators are privately agreeing with Republicans and comparing Mr Obama to Jimmy Carter, another Democrat who remains the post-war benchmark for a failed president.

"He is a do-gooder at heart," said Morris Reid, a Washington consultant and former Clinton official. "He thinks everyone has the same agenda to do the right thing, but other people don't have the same agenda. Their agenda is to score points and get their party re-elected.

They also feel that Obama does not have same "killer instinct" that the Clinton's have.  Both as a Chief Executive and a politician Obama doesn't like to get down in the mud and fight.

"This is the downside of him not being terribly political like Bill Clinton was. Bill Clinton woke up every day relishing this kind of fight, and Hillary is just a tougher person. The Clintons are much more combative, they are always ready to go to Defcon 1 ('war is imminent' state)."

....."The notion everyone is talking about is 'is he Jimmy Carter or will he be a one-term president'," he said.

Yikes, the GOP has been making the Carter comparison for months, it's kind of weird to know that the Democrats are starting to agree.  It's almost as if "they've lost that lovin' feeling."

Gary Pearce, a Democratic strategist in North Carolina, a swing state Mr Obama is likely to struggle to retain in 2012, said: "Democrats are worried. He looks weak, he doesn't say anything that grabs you, and people are looking for some kind of magic."

He said some activists were asking "do we need someone tougher to fight the tea party?" "You see a yearning for a Bill Clinton-type approach and Hillary would reflect that. Obama is just a different political animal, he is a low-key guy," he added.

Pearce is wrong, it's not that he is a low-key guy, it's that Obama believes he is the "idea guy," he doesn't like to fight in the trenches.

A 2012 primary challenge by Mrs Clinton is currently regarded as unlikely, but growing number of party activists and old hands are hoping that she changes her mind.

On his nightly television show, liberal host Bill Maher dismissed Mr Obama as a Republican, and asked his panel if Mrs Clinton would have made a better president.

"Yes," replied astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, an African American astrophysicist and broadcaster, adding that the Secretary of State would have been "a more effective negotiator in the halls of Congress."

Some Democrats are even feeling "snookered" that Obama fooled them with his brilliant 2008 campaign

An article in the New York Times by Drew Westen, a professor of psychology at Emory University and a specialist in political messaging, summarized the dismay at Mr Obama's performance and was rapidly circulated online by liberals.

"Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president," he wrote.

 Even worse, they are realizing that Barack Obama has accomplished very little after he was inaugurated as president also. 

Why Liberals and Democrats Should Oppose Obama’s Policies

by Barry Rubin

How ironic that liberals and Democrats who have no difficulty believing that Islam has been hijacked by extremists have no notion that they have been hijacked by the far left.

A coalition of 1960s’ New Leftists and what used to be called the party’s McGovernite wing has taken over using a brilliant strategy of propaganda and dissimulation. Ah, for the relatively good old days of Bill Clinton, a man who, for all his multiple faults, understood that he had to govern somewhere from within sight of the political center.

Why is it that while liberals/Democrats constantly claim the Republican Party has been taken over by its far right wing, many conservatives/Republicans constantly claim that Obama is a typical liberal/Democrat? Why don’t more critics of the current policies say instead that the Democratic Party has been taken over by its far left wing and no longer represents the worldview of mainstream Democratic voters and leaders of the past?

Instead, they play into the hands of the current government, helping it to mobilize support from Democrats and liberals by assuring them that the Obama administration is normative for liberals and Democrats rather than a radical deviation.

A question I ask my conservative and Republican friends is this: If Bill Clinton were still president you wouldn’t like it, but would you think that this is a disaster in which the country’s future was in jeopardy? If Hillary Clinton (or some other non-radical Democrat) were president, would you be so upset at what would be happening?

You might disagree but everyone I ask thinks a moment and says, “I see what you mean.”

Of course, since Obama is president and leader of the party, especially after he won election so handily, it is hard for Democratic politicians to disagree with him publicly. Yet what must they be saying in private? I think something like this: Am I going to allow this guy to destroy my career by making so many domestic mistakes that the economy will worsen even more and the people will vote against my reelection? Am I going to go along with a foreign policy that is producing a catastrophic decline in U.S. influence and victories for dangerous radical forces?

My estimate is that only about 25 percent of the Democrats in Congress are on the far left. The rest follow along because they are accepting the leadership of the president and of two truly terrible leaders in the House of Representatives and Senate, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

I am NOT arguing here about who the Republicans should nominate for president. I might be wrong, but every time I see Mitt Romney I imagine what a nice concession speech he would make after losing. But I am arguing about the need to unite all who can be united to understand the current ideological and policy mess in America.

Here are some questions that should be asked:

–Why should real traditional liberals and Democrats accept an economic policy that so distorted Keynesian economics, which never proposed ruinously unlimited debts based on totally unproductive spending?

–Why should real traditional liberals and Democrats support a suppression of free inquiry in schools and universities along with the substitution of indoctrination, an approach that totally contradicts everything liberals fought for during the last 150 years?

–Why should real traditional liberals and Democrats — especially in the foreign policy establishment — accept a policy that throws out the window every basic principle of international relations as practiced previously by all Democratic presidents (except the discredited Jimmy Carter)?

–Why should real traditional liberals and Democrats accept the takeover of their party by the far left and following a course that is so damaging to the United States and, ultimately, to their own party?

–Do Democrats and liberals, who have had such a role in shaping American history since around 1900, really want to adopt the view that America is evil, its history shameful, and that it deserves to decline?

–How has every government program, bureaucracy, and expenditure suddenly become sacred and cannot be cut in a time of spiralling deficits and an economy in deep Depression? Is it really so hard to admit that many government programs have either failed to do good or made things worse, thus deserving to be cancelled?

–Since when have Democrats and liberals rejected the free enterprise system? Reasonable controls, yes, but how does that mean support for strangling controls and punishing businesses?

–Does a reasonable concern for the environment mean preventing any serious development of America’s coal, gas, and oil resources? Democrats can claim rightly that they have greatly improved the environment over the situation decades ago when it was neglected. But having done so, why do demands for laws and regulations keep going further and further into the realm of insanity?

–Should liberals believe that America is still in the 1890s when giant corporations trampled on helpless workers, unions were weak or nonexistent, and big business dictated to government? Hasn’t America changed? Isn’t some balance needed today in order to let businesses function and create jobs?

–If you are really so horrified by the Tea Party movement then why don’t you deal with the problems of excessive spending, too much regulation, and high taxes yourselves? Is your answer to the current crisis really to propose even more spending, more regulation, and higher taxes? Can’t you admit at least to yourselves that your opponents have some valid points or do you want to spite them by making things worse?

The list is a lot longer. What’s needed today is a real battle within the Democratic Party and the real liberal intellectual circles against the left, just as there was in the 1930s on the domestic front and in the late 1940s on the foreign policy front.

Remember Harry Truman? The president who purged the U.S. government of Communist infiltrators and led the United States to play its proper role on the world stage and combat the Soviet bloc’s aggression? The president who successfully managed the post-World War Two economic transition and confronted trade unions when necessary?

In the 1948 election, real liberals and mainstream Democrats rallied around Truman. The racist right-wing of the party went with Strom Thurmond; the far left wing went with Henry Wallace in a party that was largely a Communist front. What was the name of that latter party? Oh yes, the Progressive Party! And what does the left wing that dominates the Democrats call themselves now, getting those with no sense of history to parrot that name? They ain’t talking about Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

If Democrats and liberals don’t revolt against left-wing domination, the voters will do it for them. And after the 2008 or 2012 elections, depending on whether Obama wins a second term, the Democratic Party is going to have to decide whether to remain permanently on the far left or to wake up and try to escape its captors.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His articles published originally in places other than PajamasMedia can be found at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com 

Obama And The Jewish Vote: A Qualitative Look

Note: This week, we spent much time looking at polls which indicate that the Jewish vote may be inching away from voting to reelect Barack Obama in 2012.  In my latest weekly political column for the Jewish Star, a Long Island Jewish Newspaper, I summarize much of the recent qualitative data and examine the possible electoral vote consequences of a Jewish Vote shift. I reprint that column below (with some additional insights and some minor changes).

It seems as if the straw has broken the camel’s back. According to multiple sources, Democrats of the Jewish faith are waking up to the fact that Barack Obama is not a friend of Israel. And many of them are considering holding back their campaign donations and their votes back from the President’s re-election campaign. Giving further credence to the reports, the re-election campaign is taking additional steps to “spin” the administration’s Israel story to make it seem more favorable to the Jewish State.

Ben Smith of Politico interviewed dozens of Jews who supported the President in 2008 and reported this story which when added to discussions I have had seem very typical:

“David Ainsman really began to get worried about President Barack Obama’s standing with his fellow Jewish Democrats when a recent dinner with his wife and two other couples — all Obama voters in 2008 — nearly turned into a screaming match.”

Ainsman, a prominent Democratic lawyer and Pittsburgh Jewish community leader, was trying to explain that Obama had just been offering Israel a bit of “tough love” in his May 19 speech on the Arab Spring. His friends disagreed — to say the least.

One said he had the sense that Obama “took the opportunity to throw Israel under the bus.” Another, who swore he wasn’t getting his information from the mutually despised Fox News, admitted he’d lost faith in the president.”

But it wasn’t just this particular speech, it seems as if it is a cumulative effect of all of the times Obama has thrown Israel and its leaders under the bus since he was elected president.
“It’s less something specific than that these incidents keep on coming,” said Ainsman.

Ainsman is correct. Obama’s “war on Israel” began just a few days after his inauguration with the appointment of Samantha Power to the National Security Council (Power once famously called for an invasion of Israel to force her to accept a peace plan.) And was quickly followed up with his Cairo speech where he downplayed the role of terrorism, made Hamas seem like a rowdy boys glee club, called for the internationalization of Jerusalem, and used the Palestinian party line (that Israel owes its existence to the Holocaust) to describe the Israeli presence not only in the Judea and Samaria but its very presence as a nation.


Perhaps in response to reports Such as Ben Smith's, or possibly due to some internal polling the President’s re-election campaign is planning to send out surrogates to go on the offensive against pro-Israel groups critical of the president’s Israel policy.

According to the Washington Post this Obama Jew-squad will include Jewish Obama fundraisers, such as former Conference of Presidents leader Alan Solow, former U.S. Reps. Mel Levine and Robert Wexler, and billionaire Penny Pritzker, whose fundraising rolodex was a major factor in the 2008 campaign.

This group of house-Jews will work hard to convince that Obama is really pro-Israel, but short of Bobby Ewing stepping out of the shower and claiming the last two years were just a bad dream, or lying, I am at a loss at how they will be able to convince people that the President is really a buddy of the Jewish State.

The effort to make this point will also be proactive with surrogates publishing op ed pieces that represent the White House’s point of view. It will include a renewed effort to highlight other aspects of Obama’s record that have gone under-discussed, like increased military cooperation between Israel and the United States.

But the fact that saving the Jewish vote is becoming a key effort of the Obama administration is  further proof that the re-election campaign is losing Jewish money or at the very least internal polls are beginning to show that many Jews are considering either voting GOP or not voting for President at all in 2012.

What the reelection campaign doesn't get is that its not all about Israel. Even hard-core pro-Israel Jews do not vote on only one issue. For example I voted for George HW Bush in 1992 even though (before Obama) he may have been the most Anti-Israel President in history.

The only Democrat that didn’t receive the majority of the Jewish vote was Jimmy Carter when he ran for re-election. Certainly Israel wasn’t the only reason that 55% of American Jews voted against Jimmy Carter in 1980. But, just as what happened 31 years ago, Barack Obama’s anti-Israel policies are causing liberal Jews to take the rose-tint off their glasses and evaluate what has happened since January 2009.

Despite his failed Presidency and his anti-Israel positions, Obama will most likely receive the majority of the Jewish vote, albeit a smaller percentage than in 2008. However should the current Jewish voter trend continue many Jewish Democrats may “skip” the President line at the voting booth and concentrate on the remaining candidates or even stay home totally. Of course where the Jewish vote goes also depends very heavily on the GOP candidate (but that is a different column).

Even if a major segment of liberal Jews stay home or hold their noses and vote GOP,  the entire Jewish population represents only 2.2% of the U.S. population what kind of impact could they have?  Their impact depends on the voting margin between the candidates. In a close election, a shift of Jewish votes could lose key battleground states for Obama.  States where there is a relatively larger Jewish population such as

Other states with a big Jewish populations New York, Massachusetts and California wouldn't shift from Obama even if he was caught in bed with the proverbial "dead woman or live sheep."  And as a favorite son of Illinois  he can count on that state's electoral votes.  But a  shift of 73 electoral votes, 20% of his 2008 total of 365 will make it much more difficult for President Obama to be reelected.

Keep in mind we are still 16 months before the election, heck we are still six months before the Iowa caucuses the official beginning of the primary season, there is still a very long way to go and the situation can change quickly.

What wont change is the fact that whether the President’s PR Hebrew hit squad is successful or not, its formation is an indication that the reports are true, the reelection committee is getting a bit nervous about losing the Jewish vote in 2012.

Jeff Dunetz is the Editor/Publisher of the political blog “The Lid” (www.jeffdunetz.com). Jeff contributes to some of the largest political sites on the internet including Pajamas Media, Big Government, Big Peace and Big Journalism.

New Poll Shows Jewish Vote Abandoning Obama

Its seems as if with each passing day there is another poll reporting American Jews dissatisfaction with President Obama. Yesterday it was the Gallup poll which despite the dishonest write up, showed that American Jews were abandoning Obama faster than the general population.

Released later in the day, was a poll conducted by Republican political operative Dick Morris, the headline of the Morris poll is that if the election was to be held today, Obama would get only 56% of the Jewish vote down from the 78% he received in the 2008 Election and the lowest Democratic candidate percentage since Jimmy Carter's 45% in 1980

Triggering the increasing Jewish disaffection with Obama is opposition to his proposal that an Israeli return to ’67 borders be the starting point of peace negotiations. By 10-83, Jewish voters opposed the plan. Jewish Democrats opposed it by 10-67. Asked if President Obama is “too biased against Israel,” Jewish voters as a whole agreed with the charge by 39-30, while 32 percent of Jewish Democrats also agreed (and 40 percent of Jewish Democrats disagreed).

Jews who identified themselves as Democrats also said:

• By 43-42, they break evenly on whether Obama “is being too tough on Israel.” 

• By 61-30, Jewish Democrats think the president “is naïve in thinking that he can make peace with the Arabs.”

The survey probed the issue of 1967 borders in greater depth, the issue brought up by the President's recent speech. Jewish Democrats were given a statement providing both sides of the issue:

President Obama says that Israel should give up the land it occupied after the 1967 war except for some adjustments. He says that these borders would give the Palestinians a viable nation of their own and would lead to a settlement of their conflict with Israel. Others disagree, saying that these borders are too small, exposing Israel to shelling from the Golan Heights in the north and giving the nation a middle only nine miles wide. They say that returning to the pre-’67 borders would not stop the Arabs from wanting to destroy Israel but would make it easier to do so. Which view comes closest to your own?

In response, Jewish Democrats opposed returning to the ’67 borders by 82-8.

....Given the importance of Israel to the Jewish Democratic voters of the United States, it is clear that Obama is playing with fire as he toughens the American foreign policy toward Israel and banks his credibility on the idea that peace is possible simply through Israeli territorial concessions. American Jews — Democrats included — reject the very foundation of Obama’s efforts to achieve peace in the Middle East as “naïve.”

Without a better understanding of how this poll was conducted, I cannot vouch for its veracity. First of all it implies that Jews vote one issue, Israel. This simply is not true. Even hard core pro-Israel Jews do not vote on only one issue. Certainly Israel wasn't the only reason that 55% of American Jews voted against Jimmy Carter in 1980.  But, just as what happened 31 years ago, Barack Obama's anti-Israel policies are causing liberal Jews to wake up and smell the hummus, and evaluate what has happened since January 2009 domestically, and across the world. What they see is not very positive.

Additionally I believe that the numbers are a bit too Obama negative for this early in the campaign. Maybe because it is a generic Republican vs a named candidate, but its hard to believe that without a barrage of campaigning, Obama's support is less than 60%.

That doesn't mean we should throw away this poll totally.  It is simply one more piece of evidence added to the recent anecdotal reports such as the one in Politico and quantitative data, such as the Gallup poll fisked here yesterday, which indicate that a big chunk of the Jewish vote may be up for grabs in 2012.  Hopefully the GOP will pick up this opportunity and run with it, not nationally but in key battleground states where the Jewish vote may make a difference.

Are Jewish Democrats Beginning to Say No To Obama ?

It seems as if everything is finally beginning to add up. According to several dozen interviews conducted by Politico, Americans of the Jewish faith are finally waking up to the fact that Barack Obama is not a friend of Israel. And the best efforts of Democratic spin-masters isn't going to change the truth.

David Ainsman really began to get worried about President Barack Obama’s standing with his fellow Jewish Democrats when a recent dinner with his wife and two other couples — all Obama voters in 2008 — nearly turned into a screaming match.

Ainsman, a prominent Democratic lawyer and Pittsburgh Jewish community leader, was trying to explain that Obama had just been offering Israel a bit of “tough love” in his May 19 speech on the Arab Spring. His friends disagreed — to say the least.

One said he had the sense that Obama “took the opportunity to throw Israel under the bus.” Another, who swore he wasn’t getting his information from the mutually despised Fox News, admitted he’d lost faith in the president.

But its not just this particular speech, it seems as if it is a cumulative effect of all of the times Obama has thrown Israel and its leaders under the bus since he was elected President.

“It’s less something specific than that these incidents keep on coming,” said Ainsman.

Ainsman is correct Obama's "war on Israel" began just a few days after inauguration and continued through his first year and even through today. For example, these are only some of the articles I wrote about Obama and Israel during his first months in office, and all this happened prior to his getting involved in the Israeli/Palestinian issue.

• Jan 29th 2009 Israel-Hating Samantha Power Named Key Obama Adviser
• Feb. 2009 Obama Appoints Anti-Israel Chas Freeman as Chairman of the National Intelligence Board
• June 4th 2009 Obama's Cairo Speech Threw Israel Under the Bus
• Sept. 29th 2009 Obama Tosses Israel Under The Bus--AGAIN !
  

Politico reports that the recent speech was the straw that broke the Camel's back:

The immediate controversy sparked by the speech was Obama’s statement that Israel should embrace the country’s 1967 borders, with “land swaps,” as a basis for peace talks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seized on the first half of that phrase and the threat of a return to what Israelis sometimes refer to as “Auschwitz borders.”

Ben Smith, the reporter who wrote the article believes that it is hard to resist the conclusion that some kind of tipping point has been reached.

Most of those interviewed were center-left American Jews and Obama supporters — and many of them Democratic donors. On some core issues involving Israel, they’re well to the left of Netanyahu and many Americans: They refer to the “West Bank,” not to “Judea and Samaria,” fervently supported the Oslo peace process and Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and believe in the urgency of creating a Palestinian state.

But they are also fearful for Israel at a moment of turmoil in a hostile region when the moderate Palestinian Authority is joining forces with the militantly anti-Israel Hamas.

“It’s a hot time, because Israel is isolated in the world and, in particular, with the Obama administration putting pressure on Israel,” said Rabbi Neil Cooper, leader of Temple Beth Hillel-Beth El in Philadelphia’s Main Line suburbs, who recently lectured his large, politically connected congregation on avoiding turning Israel into a partisan issue.

Some of these traditional Democrats now say, to their own astonishment, that they’ll consider voting for a Republican in 2012. And many of those who continue to support Obama said they find themselves constantly on the defensive in conversations with friends.

“I’m hearing a tremendous amount of skittishness from pro-Israel voters who voted for Obama and now are questioning whether they did the right thing or not,” said Betsy Sheerr, the former head of an abortion-rights-supporting, pro-Israel PAC in Philadelphia, who said she continues to support Obama, with only mild reservations. “I’m hearing a lot of ‘Oh, if we’d only elected Hillary instead.’”

Mentally challenged Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, told Smith detected a level of anxiety in a recent visit to a senior center in her South Florida district.

“They wanted some clarity on the president’s view,” she said. “I answered their questions and restored some confidence that maybe was a little shaky, [rebutted] misinformation and the inaccurate reporting about what was said.”

Of course the reporting was not inaccurate, like most Democrats in Congress, Wasserman-Shultz was defending her party's President. Well, either that or the reporting was
written above the third grade reading level.

“There’s an inclination in the community to not trust this president’s gut feel on Israel and every time he sets out on a path that’s troubling you do get this ‘ouch’ reaction from the Jewish Community because they’re distrustful of him,” said the president of a major national Jewish organization, who declined to be quoted by name to avoid endangering his ties to the White House.

Democrats argue that during this point of every presidential race there are arguments that this will be the year Jews abandon the Democratic party.  Truthfully, the only time that actually happened was the reelection campaign of Jimmy Carter.

“When Obama was running, there was a lot of concern among the guys in my group at shul, who are all late-30s to mid-40s, who I hang out with and daven with and go to dinner with, about Obama,” recalled Scott Matasar, a Cleveland lawyer who’s active in Jewish organizations.

Matasar remembers his friends’ worries over whether Obama was “going to be OK for Israel.” But then Obama met with the community’s leaders during a swing through Cleveland in the primary, and the rabbi at the denominationally conservative synagogue Matasar attends — “a real ardent Zionist and Israel defender” — came back to synagogue convinced.

Obama was aided in the turn-around by prominent Jews such as former NY Mayor Ed Koch and New Republic Editor Marty Peretz who gave the candidate a "Kosher on Israel" certificate. They will not be supporting Obama this time.

Now Matasar says he’s appalled by Obama’s “rookie mistakes and bumbling” and the reported marginalization of a veteran peace negotiator, Dennis Ross, in favor of aides who back a tougher line on Netanyahu. He’s the most pro-Obama member of his social circle but is finding the president harder to defend.

...A Philadelphia Democrat and pro-Israel activist, Joe Wolfson, recalled a similar progression.

“What got me past Obama in the recent election was Dennis Ross — I heard him speak in Philadelphia and I had many of my concerns allayed,” Wolfson said. “Now, I think I’m like many pro-Israel Democrats now who are looking to see whether we can vote Republican.”

Its not just the votes, this "Jewish Awakening" will also hurt him in the pocketbook.

A top-dollar Washington fundraiser aimed at Jewish donors in Miami last week raised more than $1 million from 80 people, and while one prominent Jewish activist said the DNC had to scramble to fill seats, seven-figure fundraisers are hard to sneer at.

People involved in the Philadelphia event, however, said they think Jewish doubts are taking a fund raising toll.

“We’re going to raise a ton of money, but I don’t know if we’re going to hit our goals,” said Daniel Berger, a lawyer who is firmly in the “peace camp” and said he blamed the controversy on Netanyahu’s intransigence.

The bottom line is that even hard core pro-Israel Jews do not vote on only one issue. Certainly Israel wasn't the only reason that 55% of American Jews voted against Jimmy Carter in 1980.  But, just as what happened 31 years ago, Barack Obama's anti-Israel policies are causing liberal Jews to take the rose-tint off their glasses and evaluate what has happened since January 2009, domestically, his foreign policy and his policy toward the Jewish state, and what they see is not very positive.

Lets just hope the trend continues because in the end a one-term Obama Presidency would be the best thing for America.

Obama’s Middle East Policy Will Collapse In September

By Barry Rubin

Prediction: In September, President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy blows up in his (and our) face(s). It’s totally obvious and yet no one is focusing on it.

I’m not referring to the Palestinian Authority’s bid for unilateral independence at the UN. I’m referring to the Egyptian parliamentary election.

It is totally obvious that in that election Egypt will elect a radical, anti-American, hate-Israel parliament which will then write the country’s new constitution. This is a turning point in Middle East history. And Obama is unaware of it. Quite the contrary, he declared in his State Department speech that everything is great with the “Arab spring.” Nothing can go wrong. It is the expression of a yearning for prosperity and freedom.

The Arab spring began when a frustrated man in Tunisia set himself on fire.

It will now move to the new phase: the whole Middle East will be set on fire.

Is that alarmist? Not at all, except in the sense that when one sees a fire he sets off the fire alarm.

Don’t be distracted by the question of whether Islamists will have a majority or the even narrower question of whether the Muslim Brotherhood will have a majority.

There WILL be a radical majority, there MIGHT be an Islamist majority, there won’t be a Muslim Brotherhood majority but it will ALMOST CERTAINLY be the largest single party.

Why do I say this? Well, Amr Moussa, who isn’t an Islamist and is Egypt’s most popular and important Egyptian politician says so.

There is no sign—no sign—that the moderates are organizing serious parties. Instead of getting to work, they’re complaining. Meanwhile four radical, anti-American, passionately anti-Israel forces are organizing:

--The Muslim Brotherhood, which should get one-third or more of the seats and is contesting half of them, obviously in the districts where it has the best chance of winning.

--Smaller and even more radical Islamist parties (referred to as Salafists) who could form agreements with the Brotherhood so that they won’t hurt each other’s chances.

--Left-wing neo-Marxist parties.

--Radical nationalists.

There will probably be a number of independents who will be courted and won over by one of these blocs.

Imagine the day after that election. What will the mass media say? What will the American politicians say?

--That they were wrong about the Egyptian revolution and the Muslim Brotherhood?

--That by helping to bring down the old regime, U.S. policy foisted a disaster on the region and on its own interests?

--That by celebrating how great the “Arab Spring” is and refusing to acknowledge the real threats and problems, Obama made catastrophic errors.

--That his policy has led to many advances for America’s enemies?

--That Israel is in a far worse strategic situation and certainly can’t and shouldn’t make any more concessions?

--That the Islamists are emboldened and thus both Hamas and the radicals who run Fatah are taking an even harder line?

--That the loss of faith in America by its Arab allies is now undeniably clear and they are scrambling to make their own deals with Iran and other extremists?

--That there is a real possibility of a war in which Egypt either joins directly or backs Hamas? Imagine, Egypt stays “neutral” but nobody stops thousands of Egyptian volunteers from crossing into Gaza to fight or even across the Egypt-Israel border to launch terror attacks?

--What will the Obama Administration do if in practice Egypt tears up the Israel-Egypt peace treaty even if it pretends that it isn’t doing so?

--People are insisting that if Hamas in practice becomes part of the Palestinian Authority that the United States, and certainly Congress, will cut off aid. But what will happen when the Obama Administration does everything possible to prevent an aid cut-off and nothing possible to pressure the PA into changing its policy or behavior?

These are not speculations. These things WILL happen. Nobody in the United States or Europe is seriously discussing these scenarios and what should be done about them.

And I didn’t even mention the Egyptian presidential elections or, for that matter:

--An emboldened Turkish Islamist government if it wins the June 11 elections the:re,

--A Lebanese government controlled by Syria and its clients, especially Hizballah, if it ever gets a new prime minister and cabinet installed in that country.

--The survival of an anti-American Syrian government that has murdered hundreds of its citizens and will be arresting and torturing thousands, in part due to the Obama Administration's failure to try to overthrow it?

--The sight of Iran ever closer to nuclear weapons and admissions that the sanctions had only a limited effect?

These are not far-out scenarios. All of them have a 90 percent or more likelihood of happening.

I don’t want to take your time here for a history lesson but consider precedents:

--1952. Radical regime takes power in Egypt. U.S. realizes the threat by April 1955 but then saves the regime from being overthrown by Britain, France, and Israel in 1956. Result: Violence, disruption, and anti-American problems in the region for decades.

--1979. Radical regime takes power in Iran. U.S. policy makes a mess in dealing with the revolutionary crisis. Americans taken hostage, revolutionary Islamism flourishes, thirty plus years of violence, September 11, Islamist movement still growing. By the way, why does not one of the hundreds of "experts" on television and in the mass media remember that the Iranian revolution began after President Jimmy Carter urged reform on the shah and ended with the United States calling on the shah to go away? Remind you of anything?

September 2011 will be another of those moments. Mark that on your calendar. On the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the United States will be watching the triumph of the ideology and movement--not Usama bin Ladin, of course, but his smarter counterparts--in much of the Middle East.

PS: Here's an excellent guide to Egypt's political parties so far which proves my point . Note that there isn't a single serious moderate party. Amr Mousa isn't forming a party while Muhammad ElBaradei, Obama's favorite, isn't doing anything but complain. There is a "Facebook party." So far it has 1000 "likes." Egypt has about 85 million people.


Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His PajamaMedia columns are mirrored and other articles available at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/.

Hillary Clinton Rejects Visit from the Four Plus Idiots of the Apocalypse

You put Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu, Mary Robinson and former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari a room what do you get ? Well, if you answered a barbershop quartet signing pro-United States tunes you are wrong.   Nor should you expect them to be on the speakers list for Glenn Beck's August rally in Jerusalem. You won't even find them at a party celebrating the removal of Osama bin Laden as a threat.

These four people have many things in common, they are "Lets talk around a campfire and make peace by giving away everything to people who don't really want peace" types. All four participated in appeasing the forces of evil and in their own way helped to make the world a more dangerous place.  They are all part of Richard Branson's (the Virgin guy) "save the world group" called the Elders, a more appropriate name would be the Four Plus Idiots of the Apocalypse, because they are more likely to cause a world-wide conflagration than prevent one.

Last month Carter and Ahtisaari went to North Korea along with fellow elders Irish President Mary Robinson and former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Bruntland. (Other Elders include Kofi Annan, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, and Aung San Suu Kyi).

They came back with the impression that the North Koreans were really nice guys and they US should give up its leverage and start providing the rogue nation with food aid.

The most useless tool of them all, former  President Jimmy Carter was hoping to bring his Finnish buddy to the State Department this week to brief officials on their recent trip to North Korea, but not one member of the DOS wanted to had time to meet them and their trip was canceled.

"The trip was arranged at short notice and due to busy schedules and given everything else going on we were not able to arrange meetings at the right level," a spokesman for the Elders told The Cable. The State Department offered no comment on the situation.

I did hear rumors  that everyone at the State Department scheduled root canal surgery so they could avoid meeting with Jimmy and his traveling band of appeasers. 

But while the State Department might be too busy to hear from the Elders, your humble Cable guy has a bit more free time. Before the cancellation, The Cable had an exclusive interview with Ahtisaari, who at that time was very excited to brief State Department officials on his first visit to North Korea. He even held out hope for a meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Ahtisaari called on the international community and the Obama administration to resume food aid to North Korea and to delink humanitarian assistance from political negotiations. He said the World Food Programme had better monitoring capabilities than before, better access, and there was less chance the DPRK would divert food aid to feed its military

He also called for the beginning of a political dialogue with the DPRK on all outstanding issues and said that the North Koreans were interested in both bilateral talks and discussing a return to the Six Party Talks on its nuclear program. Ahtisaari also said the Elders were told that Kim Jong Il was prepared to join a summit meeting with his south Korean counterpart, Lee Myong Bak.

"I'm not asking anyone to believe every word that the North says, but we have to take seriously when they say they are prepared to talk," Ahtisaari said. "How do you expect your present policy of not talking to solve any of the issues you presumably you want to be solved. I don't have any other answers but to sit and talk."

It's no secret at all that the Elders' trip to North Korea was viewed as extremely unhelpful by the governments both in Washington and Seoul. Chris Nelson reported on April 29 that Clinton reacted strongly when asked in a morning meeting if she wanted to meet with Carter. From the Nelson report:

The performance of President Carter and his delegation in N. Korea this week was either shameful or fatuous...or both...and exemplifies why Carter had no...zero...USG support going in, and even less coming out, per an alleged eye witness account of Sec. St. Clinton at the morning meeting the other day:

"Do you want to meet with Carter?" Clinton is looking at papers, and just says "No." Then she pauses, looks up and adds, "HELL no!!!"

Besides going to North Korea without any administration support, Carter alienated Washington's policy community when he declared at a Seoul press conference on April 28 that "to deliberately withhold food aid to the North Korean people because of political or military issues not related is really indeed a human rights violation."

Remember when Willie Mays playing for the 1973 Mets? How sad it was to see this all time great looking pathetic on the field. Carter kind of reminds me of that, well except for the fact that he was always lousy, but with age his poor judgment got worse.

Carter and his fellow Elders travel around the world pushing solutions which were  proven unsuccessful many times over.  If Richard Branson truly wanted to help the world, he would create a the first The Virgin Home for Failed Politicians, Diplomats, and Other Not Very Useful Idiots,  so these Elders can take their appeasing "Kumbaya" attitude into retirement.