Obama’s Problem With the Democratic Vote
May 8th, 2008 at 01:21pm Mark Noonan
Certainly, Obama has locked down the African American vote and the upper class white vote - but these two constituencies invariably vote Democratic. Obama’s got two problems - how to get the rest of the Democratic vote (blue collar workers, Jewish voters), while also poaching a bit into McCain’s GOP base. Poaching GOPers is going to be rough - but it might prove just as rough for Obama to lock down the normal Democratic vote, as Mark Hemmingway points out over at NRO’s The Corner:
From Marc Ambinder:
Gallup’s tracking finds that 61% of all Jewish voters would choose Barack Obama in a general election versus John McCain, only a smidge less than the percentage who would choose Clinton over McCain (66%).
Caveat: Jews have voted for the Democrat in much higher proportions — John Kerry took 76% of the Jewish vote; Al Gore took 79% of the Jewish vote.
What this suggests is that McCain attracts more than an average Republican’s share of Jewish voters — not that Obama repels him.
With all due respect to Ambinder who’s a talented reporter, I think he’s dead wrong on that last point. If he’d read my article in the latest NRODT, he’d know that it’s entirely likely Obama has real problems with Jewish voters. For some time now, many in the Jewish community been openly discussing the problems they have with Obama’s stance on Israel, as well as that of his advisors. And certainly his long association with former PLO spokesmen Rashid Khalidi isn’t helping. If McCain pulls down 39-40% of the Jewish vote in the election that would be remarkable — no Republican has done that since Reagan in 1980. Also, the Jewish vote could have serious electoral consequences. Aside from Florida, some three percent of Pennsyvania’s population is Jewish.
McCain getting 40% of the Jewish vote would likely put Florida entirely out of reach for Obama, and that means Ohio would become a “must win” State, just as it turned out for Kerry in 2004. But as noted, with a high Jewish population in Pennsylvania - especially when coupled with Pennsylvania’s large blue collar and rural vote - that State might fall out of Obama’s reach…and that would make…well, heck…it would make Virginia and West Virginia “must win” States for Obama. In other words, if McCain can seriously eat into Obama’s normal Democrat Jewish vote in November, it will complicate Obama’s quest for 270 electoral votes quite a bit.
Now, fellow GOPers, this is some good news - and it is just about time that Jewish Americans (at least, those who care at all about Judaism and/or Israel) ceased their support for a Democratic party ever more enthralled to a left growing increasingly anti-Semitic. But it is just that - some good news; some cause for positive thinking…but it isn’t a done deal, not by a long shot. Prying lose 40% of the Jewish vote will not be easy, and it will be up to McCain - and the rest of us GOPers - to demonstrate that a switch to the GOP is in accordance with overall Jewish belief. A high hill to climb - but lets start climbing it.
Entry Filed under: Campaign 2008, Democrats, Republicans
19 Comments
1. test » Blog Archive&hellip | May 8th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
[…] Problem With the Democratic Vote unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptGallup’s tracking finds that 61% of […]
2. extramedium | May 8th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
“it is just about time that Jewish Americans (at least, those who care at all about Judaism and/or Israel) ceased their support for a Democratic party ever more enthralled to a left growing increasingly anti-Semitic.”
Another fantastic smear. How do you reckon that the left is growing increasingly anti-semitic?
3. OhioOrrin | May 8th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
ear bama better put richardson on the ticket or the latinos won’t vote 4 him.
course that’ll mean most white women 40 - 60 won’t either.
Hill’s not done yet either. She’s gotta beat him up enough that he loses the general so she can run again in 4 yrs.
4. My new WordPress MU Site &hellip | May 8th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
[…] rochester_veteran wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptGallup’s tracking finds that 61% of all Jewish voters would choose Barack Obama in a general election versus John McCain, only a smidge less than the percentage who would choose Clinton over McCain (66%). … […]
5. Canadian Observer | May 8th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
ear bama better put richardson on the ticket or the latinos won’t vote 4 him.
course that’ll mean most white women 40 - 60 won’t either.
3. OhioOrrin | May 8th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Are you suggesting, OhioOrrin, that women 40-60 would withhold their vote for Obama if his running mate were latino? Why in the world would the ethnicity of the Vice-President matter to them?
6. lk walker | May 8th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Deleted - vulgarity.
7. FmrMarine | May 8th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
my:
The “jewish” vote needs to read this!
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1209627040670&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
April 07th 2008
A reader from Free Republic has dug up an old article last year (March 07) From TNR about Obama. It was written by Ryan Lizza, Senior editor at The New Republic. It’s a biographical piece, but in the article, it explicitly states that Jeremiah Wright is a former Muslim.
read the rest of the story here.
http://infidelsarecool.com/2008/04/07/jeremiah-wright-former-muslim/
and here
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/01/barack_obama_and_israel.html
8. Carl Gordon | May 8th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Poor Obama’s been getting slackered by fourth estate drug pushers desgiused as “Pundits” with little effect. The ever increasing shenanigans of the media and their paid slack-jawed mouth breathers is getting wackier by the day. Joe andd the guy named after hemmoroid medicine have been given free reign to confuse and confound like nattering butt trumpets and there doesn’t seem to be anybody or anything to help us all escape. Is there any escape from noise?
My first reflex his to stomp them like roaches, but I resist the temptation to get ensconced in the legal system and besides, they got the wrong kind of bars in those places. And with McCain hiding under the nearest neo-con skirt, things have been, to a certain extent, crazy and untenable.
It’s difficult, but I’ll try to put in some context, but I just get blotto and I can’t explain it in words without my head spinning like the time I got off the Hammerhead at the Corn Festival, just before my older brother yakked all over the girl who waited patiently in line with the pretty white flowered summer dress and the rather fetching tits, ruined for all time by pre-chewed chunks of hot dog, candy apple, and approximately 3 ears of corn slathered in over-salted butter and speckled with what appeared to be pepper but after further investigation, turned out to be fly doo-doo, as there was a bottleneck in the production line betwixt the casual boiling of the ears and the butter slathering station. And money wasn’t involved nor were there any reported labor disputes. I’m sure in time that pubescent young lady, through faithful attendance at a local Psychologist’s office, who was later incarcerated due to several well fingered photo albums of young patients who were photographed in the office restroom without their consent, and her faith in an omnipresent powerful being alleged to be the creator of all things but too disinterested in any way as to impede in the reception of yak upon that pretty dress, as the dress ultimately found it’s final resting in the big dumpster behind the Mayfair market. She eventually resigned herself to live in the now, as she, like Ingmar Bergman, finally deduced that god is silent, so what’s the fucking point anyway.
Persevere
9. Mark Noonan | May 9th, 2008 at 12:40 am
Extra,
Oh, I don’t know - perhaps is it the huge number of overtly or implicitly anti-Semitic statements we’ve been hearing on the left? Not the first time the left has gone anti-Semite, by the way…heck, even Marx was a self-hating Jew….when you live on lies, as the left does, being an anti-Semite is just par for the course. Leftwing anti-Semitism merely became unfashionable for a while - while the Holocaust was fresh in everyone’s memory…but, over the years, the left has managed to forget all that, and so anti-Semitism is back in favor on the left.
10. extramedium | May 9th, 2008 at 3:06 am
Again - your vague assertion about anti-semitic statements from the left sounds like a hateful smear.
I’m going to guess that you are referring to the popular conservative distortion that any criticism of Israeli policy equates to antisemitism. Or that anything other than unconditional support of Israeli policy is antisemitism. Perhaps that Jewish-American liberals are antisemites if they criticize expansion of settlements in the occupied territories. Or that questioning any sort of hawkish policy regarding Iran is inherently antisemitic.
These would all be smears. Next thing you know, you’ll be telling me that liberals secretly love Hitler.
I know that you are too smart to actually believe all these partisan lies and distortions, so that makes it extra shameful for you to propagate them. And for what? To get McCain elected - who’s a half-assed conservative to begin with? Hardly worth sacrificing your credibility.
11. Zach | May 9th, 2008 at 9:08 am
“To get McCain elected - who’s a half-assed conservative to begin with?”
Are you saying you’d prefer him to be more of a staunch conservative?
12. Percy Beezer | May 9th, 2008 at 10:58 am
“liberals secretly love Hitler”?
Nothing secret about it.
13. grace | May 9th, 2008 at 11:29 am
It is such a long time that the Jews have been monolithic. I do not understand it. When James Baker said “screw (or f) the jews, they don’t vote for us anyway was our first clue. We must never be taken for granted. I have not had one Jewish E-mailer in anything but fear of Obama…now whether that translates into a McCain vote is something else. But if we do not vote for McCain, then it becomes a vote for Obama….Jews, wake up, this is really a turning point for us.
14. OhioOrrin | May 9th, 2008 at 11:44 am
CO re #5 - no, if richardson is ON the ticket, then hill is NOT and she would carry the 40-60 white women. surveys show HALF of white women 40-60 will vote 4 McCain if ear bama is the nominee.
I probably could’ve written my earlier comment alittle more clearly.
15. Mark Noonan | May 9th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
extra,
Come now, you’ve been coming here long enough to know that I hold the left to be all that - communist, socialist, fascist, Nazi…its all of a piece; all part of a anti-God, anti-human, totalitarian mindset which has various manifestations, but all connected and, at bottom, all the same. I’ve been saying this for years.
Its not a matter of my saying “liberals are Nazis”, but a matter of my saying “liberals and Nazis develope their worldview from the same basic - and flawed - principles”. The fundamental lie is that mankind is perfectable - that we can create the Kingdom of God here on earth. Once you fall into that trap, whether you wind up Nazi or communist is immaterial - either of them are just as bad as the other. You can fight tooth and nail against the Nazis, if you are a liberal, and while you think your fighting for good against evil, you’re really just fighting for a different variety of the same evil - perhaps softer and more kindly, but just as evil in its long term effects (check out the way socialism, for instance, has destroyed Europe…no wars and no gas chambers, but Europe is dying today as much as it would have died 60 years ago had Hitler won).
Your denial of the clear and unmistakable anti-Semitism on the left stems, I’ll bet, from your conviction that liberal/left thought is anethema to anti-Semitic thought…that liberal can’t be anti-Semite because anti-Semitism is a manifestation of the right, which the liberal battles against.
Of course, what anti-Semitism really amounts to is a manifestation of wickedness - an evil desire to deny the fundamental brotherhood of mankind as decreed by God; all human beings can fall into wickedness, and that means that if a liberal is wicked, he can be an anti-Semite (or a racist, or a bank robber, or any one of a thousand different bad things). The worst thing for you liberals is that since your worldview is built on a lie - and must therefor be sustained by lies - you more easily fall into the trap of wickedness in the defense of your false worldview.
The unexamined life really isn’t worth living, extra, and the first step towards the cure of liberalism is to get liberals to actually examine what they’ve done.
16. extramedium | May 9th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Mark,
There is certainly a lot to debate in what you’ve just said and I disagree with just about all of it, but first - what statements or actions from liberals do you hold to be antisemitic? In three statements from you, I still cannot determine how it is that you believe liberals are anti-semitic. Is it some sort of common knowledge that I’m not aware of, or something that need not be explicitly said?
You’ve made a very serious allegation and so I must press - how is it that liberals are antisemitic? Yes I’ve been visiting your blog for some time and I’m well aware of your belief that liberalism equates to every form of evil - past, present and future - but please answer this simple question.
17. jake | May 9th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
As a jew and liberal i am really offended by that mark. You are a bigot. Most jews are democrats because of church state issues and with no proof whats so ever you spew hate more than anyone on this site. Read what you write.
18. GOP4ME | May 24th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Jake,
As a Christian Conservative I am deeply offended by your sophomoric Liberalism.
As for your faith? I could not care less…
I suppose one just need to ask. Which side of the aisle is calling for divestiture from Israel?
Hint - It isn’t ours…
19. Lee | June 20th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
BLOOMBERG ENDORSES OBAMA ???
Obama spent over 20 years, deeply involved in Chicago’s Trintity church, which gave anti-semitic Louis Farakan a life time achievement award. During that time Obama never stood up against Farakan’s anti-semitism, and he only quit the church when it threatened his political ambitions. In addition, if you read the blogs, it’s obvious that many of Obama’s most devoted supporters are extremely anti-Israel. Actions always speak louder than words, or endorsements … especially if the actions (or inactions) span a period of over 20 years. Even with all the efforts to package and sell Obama to the American people, the facts speak for themselves. Obama does not have the character, integrity and judgement to be President of the United States of America.