The Jewish Problem of Obama

Today, it is already obvious that Obama has not managed to retain the level of support from Jews as he did two years ago. He’s not about to repeat Jimmy Carter’s mistake in the spring of 1980 either.

Here are two headlines that could come across on the computer screen this week. One of them: “Gallup poll: U.S. Jewish support for Obama on the decline.” The other one: “Poll: Obama still enjoys high approval rate among US Jews. Gallup says U.S. president’s Mideast speech not as detrimental to his presidential campaign as believed.” Confusing? It is the Israeli press that’s getting confused (in this case — Haaretz and Ynet), but the American media has also responded similarly.

For instance, one magazine said that “The Jews Are Going To Vote for President Obama,” whereas another one asked where Jewish support for Obama went: “No Exodus?” And what’s interesting is that all of those headlines relied on the same poll released Tuesday by the Gallup polling institute, in which it turned out that 62 percent of American Jews are satisfied with the job Obama’s doing while 30 percent of them are not.

The Jews Still Back Obama

[Here we have] a small decrease in the Jewish backing of Obama since the previous poll, however, not one reflecting a mass abandonment in the wake of the last round of street combats between the president and the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Jews still support Obama more than most of the other population groups in America. In the general public he enjoys only 47 percent approval (against 45 percent who do not approve of him, according to Galllup). Anyway, contrary to what they say, it’s not the numbers that speak in polls but rather the expectations.

One who’s expecting Obama to recreate his success of the 2008 elections and gain nearly 80 percent of the Jewish vote would apparently be left disappointed with the Gallup findings. But one who understands that the general erosion in the status of the president must also affect the support of the Jewish electorate would probably be quite content with the new statistics. That is to say, one will be content with Gallup’s new data but not necessarily with those coming in their aftermath. Not with these that pollster Dick Morris published this week.

Obama Won’t Endorse Any Proposal That Would Be Harmful to Israel in the U.N.

Is 56 percent enough for him? Seemingly, this is pretty much a stable majority in order to win, should he get something like this in all the sectors of the population. But the Jews are not a sector of the American population just like all the sectors. They are not a sector of swing votes but instead a sector that is supposed to be stable in its support and overwhelmingly in the camp of the Democratic candidate.

They are supposed to side with Obama more, and therefore the president and his staff are discontent with what was seen this week in the polls. The fact: As revealed in the Washington Post last week, they set up a special task force to tackle the president’s “Jewish problem.”

The members in it, just to name a few, are the outgoing Chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations Alan Solow and former Congressman Robert Wexler. Both of them were in Israel two weeks ago.

This team has already been hinted at that it won’t be compelled to deal with a mess in September that would remind Jewish voters of Jimmy Carter in the spring of 1980. Then, as now, the president was pondering on what to do in face of a vote in the U.N. Security Council. His Ambassador to the U.N. Donald McHenry voted for Resolution 456, which defined Jerusalem as an “occupied” city.

The White House announced that the mistake happened due to “a failure of communication” — nonetheless it was a mistake already too late to fix. “Carter, You’re the Mistake” read a sign [at a protest rally] against him. In the New York state primaries, he lost to the candidate attempting to succeed him, Ted Kennedy. In the general elections, his rival Ronald Reagan received almost 40 percent of the Jewish votes. Carter received from the Jewish voters about the same proportion as from the rest of the sectors in the population — a unique occurence since the twenties of the previous century.

Obama, his associates say, won’t endorse in September any proposal that would harm Israel in the U.N., which might also be helpful with his voters — the American Jews.