If pursuing the Jewish vote involves gimmicks that are more mockery than marketing, Obama may be harmed.
By HAVIV RETTIG GURsarah silverman yenta mason 88(photo credit: )
Democrat Barack Obama's campaign seems to be enjoying a boost as American voters blame the incumbent Republicans for the country's financial woes.
In the Jewish community, however, most polls show lackluster support for the Democratic candidate, at least compared to the overwhelming support Democrats enjoyed in the Jewish community in previous elections.
If two recent initiatives from the Jewish Council for Education and Research are any indication, Obama's most ardent Jewish supporters may be one of the major causes for his relatively low popularity.
These first of these initiatives is The Great Schlep, a project aimed at getting young Jewish Obama supporters to travel to Florida to convince their more conservative grandparents to vote for their candidate. In a video promoting the initiative, uncouth satirist Sarah Silverman urged the grandchildren of Florida retirees to make the trek.
The video has been discussed widely in major American newspapers, with reporters usually quoting Silverman's stock-in-trade surprise barbs, such as: "If Barak Obama doesn't become the next president of the United States, I'm gonna blame the Jews." The humor comes from the fact that the statement is clearly ridiculous.
Or is it?
Unlike the reporters, Silverman herself didn't stop there. Unreported in the media coverage are her next five sentences: "I am. And I know you're saying, like, 'Oh my god, Sarah, I can't believe you're saying this. Jews are the most liberal, scrappy, civil rights-y people there are.'
"Yes, that's true, but you're forgetting a whole large group of Jews that are not that way, and they go by several aliases: nana, papa, zaide, bubbie, plain old grandma and grandpa. These are the people who vote in Florida, and the Florida vote can make or break an election."
This is not "blaming the Jews," but it is blaming a certain kind of Jew. That equation - not all Jews are good Jews, and the bad apples could cost us the election - seems a strange way to try to convince those grandparents to vote for Obama. Even the name of the initiative, "The Great Schlep," is meant to mock more than convince.
The second initiative came from the same group. A video produced to counter the charge that Obama would be bad for Israel shows a handful of former Israeli security officials expressing support for Obama's presidency and grave doubts about the Bush administration's policies in the Middle East.
The online video had to be taken down Wednesday and edited when it was revealed that its two most influential speakers had been deceived about its purpose, and then suffered the double indignity of having their words edited out of context.
Former IDF deputy chief of staff Uzi Dayan and former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy claimed they had never expressed preference for either candidate, but merely complimented both. Nor were they made aware that the interviews with them were intended for a pro-Obama election video.
"This is pure and simple deceit. I never expressed support for Obama, his approach or his opinions. I've also never expressed support for McCain," said Dayan.
Following this embarrassing revelation, the Obama campaign noted it had not been involved in the making of the video.
The two incidents seem to point to a troubling tendency in the Democratic outreach to the Jewish community, one which could do real damage to Obama's standing in this left-leaning demographic. Simply put, the JCER that made the videos does not seem to know much about the constituency it is hoping to deliver to the Democratic ticket.
For one thing, the Florida Jewish community is not a bunch of cranky right-wing retirees. It is the fourth-largest Jewish community in the United States, and is as demographically and politically diverse as Jews throughout the country.
Recent polls suggest that, as with many other life-long Democrats, some of these Jews are second-guessing a vote for Obama not because they are racist (as the Silverman video suggests in juxtaposing "nana" with a young black man) but because their favorite for the presidency was Hillary Clinton.
Many Jews, it is true, are concerned about Israel, but many are also sophisticated enough to know (or to discover via Google) that Brig.-Gen. (res.) Shlomo Brom and Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amram Mitzna are on the far left of the Israeli political map. It doesn't help that centrists such as Dayan and Halevy apparently had to be duped into participating in the film.
Silverman, too, deals with Israel in explaining why Obama is preferable to McCain: "Here are some fun facts. Barack Obama's foreign policy is much more stabilizing than John McCain's and much better for Israel. He wants to protect Social Security. His brisket is beyond. It's beyond. He's circum-circumsu-circumsupersized."
This is not the sort of campaign that takes Jewish voters' concerns seriously. The real Jewish community of Florida has real concerns that need to be addressed, not by arrogantly suggesting that their grandchildren need to talk sense into them, but by directly addressing the questions being asked by people for whom the Democratic Party has been their political home all their lives.
Rather than treat their concerns honorably, the JCER chose to send a woman who used humor that treats them with contempt.
Less than four weeks before an election that is still up for grabs, it doesn't seem like a winning strategy to tell a key constituency in a swing state that they're too stupid or too racist to be trusted with their own opinions.
For her part, Silverman makes no pretense of holding Jewish interests at heart. As The New York Times related: "Though she comes from a Jewish background, she said: 'I have no religion. But culturally I can't escape it, I'm very Jewish.' Her appeal to older viewers, she said, is 'because of my Jewy-ness.'"
It is strange that the Obama campaign has not been more forceful in renouncing the deceitful video and restoring respect and honor to the battle for the Jewish vote.
The JCER video demonstrates not only a willingness to tolerate dishonesty in pursuit of an election victory, but a striking level of incompetence. Did they believe that a former head of the Mossad would support one side in an American presidential campaign, or that he would not notice when he's misrepresented?
If the pursuit of the Jewish vote involves gimmicks that are more mockery than marketing, Obama's cause in that community could be seriously harmed.
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