The reality is that Al Gore took 67% of the votes in 2000. Obama took 55% in 2008. The finally tally has Turner winning 56% to 44%. Worst, Weiner received 66,000 votes in 2008. Only 60,000 people voted in this election. Doing the math, that means about 40,000 Democratic voters didn't show up. Remember. The Democrats hold a three to one registration over the Republicans. It's hard not to read this is election as a harbinger of no-show Democrats to come. Obama did a great job in 2008 of getting out the vote. The reverse will surely be the case if Obama is the presidential candidate in 2012. The recent Gallup poll showed support among whites has plummeted by about 40%. It's down at least 30% among Hispanics and even among his strongest base, Blacks, he's down 15%. It's not that all of them will vote against him. They're just not going to show up. That will be a disaster for downstream candidates. This is the reality, but Obama and the leaderless Democrats are going to spin this another way.
Obama and too many other Democrats will take a lesson from Weprin's loss that they have to be more loyal to Israel, have to sign on to the words and policies of the extreme right wing politicians who were given power in Israel because of the bizarre parliamentary system of the Knesset that gives extreme power to ultra fundamentalist ultra-orthodox Jews-- who are incredibly bigoted towards Arabs, Muslims and even non-orthodox Jews.
I expect that Obama's lesson from this will be to kiss up to Netanyahu more.
I'm sure that local politics did play some role. But forty percent of the district is Jewish and Roman Catholic Turner won the Jewish vote in the election, running against Weprin, an Orthodox Jew. The website, The Blaze, reports
"This seems to be rooted in deep unhappiness with Obama on this issue--only 30 percent of voters overall approve of how he's handling Israel to 54 percent who disapprove and with Jewish voters his approval on Israel is 22 percent with 68 of voters disapproving. That has a lot to do with why Turner's in such a strong position," said early results of a Public Policy Polling report.
Wikipedia reports that about ten percent of American and 27% of Israeli Jews are Orthodox. It's also interesting to note that wikipedia reports that "to refer to Orthodox Judaism would be to erroneously imply that there are other types of valid Judaism." This seems to suggest that Orthodox Jews do not consider other formers of Judaism to be legitimate. My personal experience is that for many Orthodox Jews, they consider conservative, reform, reconstructionist or non-affiliated Jews to be non-Jewish, although the evangelical orthodox look on them as prime targets.
But consider that historically, 70-80% of Jews have voted Democratic. That leaves room for all the orthodox and a solid percentage of other Jews who vote GOP. My point is that the Wasserman Schultz argument that this election was lost because the unique Orthodox Jewish component may not fly. Even if the Orthodox rabbis issued Fatwas against their kindred Orthodox Jew, Weprin, they represented a minority, even in this very Jewish district. That would lead us to conclude that Obama was the primary factor. Obama's failure on the economic front was the issue that Turner harped on.
The leader of the Democratic party is Barack Obama. It is a challenge for the rest of the sub-leaders of the democratic party-- the members of congress-- to face the reality that Barack Obama's name on the ballot will mean an almost sure loss in November 2012. The Democratic leadership, with its heads in the ground, will do all it can to spin the defeat as anything but Obama's fault.
Don't listen. The Orthodox Jews DID vote against Obama. But come November, the Latinos, the Blacks, the union workers, the gay community, the unemployed, the poor, the people on medicare, the people afraid Obama will betray them on social security, the people whose homes are under water-- they will all vote against Obama, not only directly, in the presidential ballot slot, but also down ballot, on Democratic senate and house seats, on state elections, on judges, on any way they can. And they will deserve to lose, because the Democrats don't have the insight, the guts the reality testing and judgment to accept the fact that Obama is not only toast, but toxic to the Democratic party.
Update: The NY Times reports that the Democrats and Obama are redoubling their efforts to shore up the Jewish vote.
They just don't get it that Obama is hemorrhaging in ALL the demographics. All of them.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
7
6
5
