Obama and the Jewish Vote

An AJC poll shows 65 percent of Jews nationwide support Obama, 24 percent support Romney, and 10 percent are undecided. (I assume a rounding error accounts for the missing one percent.)

The poll, conducted Sept. 6-17 among 1,040 Jewish voters nationwide, found Obama doing better than Romney among Jews of all religious backgrounds with the exception of the Orthodox, who favored the Republican nominee. Taking into account the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points, the poll's overall finding regarding the state of the Jewish vote is similar to other recent polling from Gallup and elsewhere. Another recent poll by the AJC of registered Jewish voters in Florida found 69 percent supporting Obama and 25 percent for Romney.

 These statistics matter in Florida, a must-win highly Jewish state. I doubt whether Obama polls at 69 percent in Florida now, after his highly-watched trouncing October 3rd. Still, he will win the majority of the Jewish vote. What I find most fascinating is how his Jewish support has changed since Obama's first term. Here is the Jewish voting record for 88 years of U.S. presidential elections ( from the Jewish Virtual Library, link here):

Election Year	Candidates	Jewish Vote*	Total Vote*		Election Year	Candidates	Jewish Vote*	Total Vote*
2008	McCain (R)	22	46		1960	Nixon (R)	18	50
	Obama (D)	78	52			Kennedy (D)	82	50
2004	Bush (R)	24	51		1956	Eisenhower (R)	40	57
	Kerry (D)	76	48			Stevenson (D)	60	42
2000	Bush (R)	19	48		1952	Eisenhower (R)	36	55
	Gore (D)	79	48			Stevenson (D)	64	44
1996	Dole (R)	16	41		1948	Dewey (R)	10	45
	Clinton (D)	78	49			Truman (D)	75	50
	Perot (I)	3	8			Wallace (Progressive)	15	2
1992	Bush (R)	11	37		1944	Dewey (R)	10	46
	Clinton (D)	80	43			Roosevelt (D)	90	53
1988	Bush (R)	35	53		1940	Wilkie (R)	10	45
	Dukakis (D)	64	46			Roosevelt (D)	90	55
1984	Reagan (R)	31	59		1936	Landon (R)	15	37
	Mondale (D)	67	41			Roosevelt (D)	85	61
1980	Reagan (R)	39	51		1932	Hoover (R)	18	40
	Carter (D)	45	41			Roosevelt (D)	82	57
1976	Ford (R)	27	48		1928	Hoover (R)	28	58
	Carter (D)	71	50			Smith (D)	72	41
1972	Nixon (R)	35	61		1924	Coolidge (R)	27	54
	McGovern (D)	65	38			Davis (D)	51	29
1968	Nixon (R)	17	43		1920	Harding (R)	43	60
	Humphrey (D)	81	43			Cox (D)	19	34
	Wallace (I)	2	14			Debs (Socialist)	38	3
1964	Goldwater (R)	10	38
	Johnson (D)	90	61

Jews have voted heavily Democratic for generations. As much as 80 to 90 percent of the Jewish vote goes to popular Democratic candidates. However, Obama is probably not going to win the 78 percent of the Jewish vote that went for him in the 2008 election. Most likely he will win about 72 percent of the Jewish vote, a significant decline. (I am taking the AJC poll numbers and giving Obama seven percent out of the ten percent currently undecided.) One must go back 34 years, to the days of the Reagan juggernaut to find Jewish voters supporting the Democratic candidate so weakly. Why?

An increasingly high number of Jews are voting against Obama for the same reason that roughly half the electorate is voting against Obama--the bad economy. Most Jews like his unfailingly liberal views on health care, energy and social policies. The high unemployment rate and low level of GDP growth trumps those issues. The magic of the 2008 election is gone, and negative campaigning is back.

Secondly, Obama's support of Israel seems more tenuous than it really is, mostly because of his poor relations with Israeli premier, Benjamin Netanyahu. (See my previous comments on that here.)

At this point Obama can't do much to heal the economy, but if he loses Florida in the election, he may wish that he met in late September with Netanyahu instead of snubbing him.

Update October 8, 2012: Mitt Romney, in a foreign policy speech, keyed in on the Obama-Netanyahu split. He said, "The relationship between the president of the United States and the prime minister of Israel, for example -- our closest ally in the region -- has suffered great strains. The president explicitly stated that his goal was to put "daylight" between the United States and Israel, and he succeeded. This is a dangerous situation that has set back the hope of peace in the Middle East and emboldened our mutual adversaries, especially Iran."

Moderate and conservative Jews may agree.

Voter ID Laws Make Sense

Virginia has a new voter ID law. This is a good thing. The arguments against voter ID are patently ridiculous and unbelievable. I quote two from Voter ID Laws Pose More Challenges than Solutions by Tova Andrea Wang, posted in the March/April 2012 edition of Social Education.

She claims that 18 percent of Americans over the age of 65 do not have a photo ID. These older Americans must live a very different life than my grandparents. Without photo ID, I assume they reside on an island without the use of banks or airplane travel. I have met only one senior who functioned without photo ID, my great grandmother. Laconic in speech and heavily accented, she, as far as I know, didn't bother getting American citizenship. She died 40 years ago.  I don't think she regretted not being able to vote in American elections as long as the Russian Czar wasn't coming back.

Wang complains that to obtain photo ID, citizens must produce "other documentation and identification, which they are unlikely to have, such as a birth certificate. Such documents cost money to obtain copies" (P.68). No birth certificate? Is it possible that poor people aren't actually born and arrive on this earth by some other means? Where is the birth certificate? If your mama lost it, does that become the state's problem? Don't you need a birth certificate to work as a productive member of society? How can you show that you are an American citizen and get a job without one?

I think we are dealing with a much deeper issue--do people have to be responsible? The answer is, yes. Forcing deadbeats to get a photo ID not only ensures a greater number of voters; it also ensures a greater number of responsible citizens.

August 25, 2012 Postscript: Investment writer and political commentator Richard C. Young argues convincingly for photo identification for voters in Why We Need Voter ID (link here). First of all, leaving your identification at home does not preclude you from voting. In states that have the strictest photo ID laws

Voters who are unable to show ID at the polls are given a provisional ballot. Those provisional ballots are kept separate from the regular ballots. If the voter returns to election officials within a short period of time after the election (generally a few days) and presents acceptable ID, the provisional ballot is counted.

Fraud exists. The Republican National Lawyers Association catalogs voter fraud attempts, and dozens of organized and individual attempts at voter fraud have taken place already this year.Young concludes, "vote fraud, even on a small scale, harms Americans by diluting their most powerful right. It must be prevented."

September 17, 2012 Postscript: Pennsylvania also makes it easier for voters to get their ID together--
"Native Pennsylvanians who need to confirm their birth certificates using the state’s records will soon be able to do so with just one visit to a PennDOT licensing center" See the ink here. The charge that Pennsylvania is suppressing voters just got refuted.
February 9, 2012 Postscript: Voter fraud in the 2012 election was outed in Ohio here.

Vote or Go To Jail?

Should mandatory voting laws be implemented in the United States? That was the Perspectives question in the January/February 2011 Social Education (the official journal of National Council for the Social Studies).

Political scientist Norman Ornstein favors compulsory voting laws. He believes that mandatory voting would reinforce the political middle.

“The two parties are [currently] too tied to their activist wings to do anything to reduce the power of the electromagnetics pulling candidates and elected officials to the edges and away from the middle…or to change the extreme rhetoric and scare tactics used to frame the issues (P.12)”

Ornstein prefers the Australian model, where mandatory voting is enforced by the threat of a modest fine, about $15 or $20. “That small nudge has over time boosted Aussie turnout from less than 60 percent before the process was implemented in 1924 to well over 90 percent” (P.13).

Australian politicians try to appeal to persuadable voters in the center of the political spectrum rather than trying to excite the base on the fringes. The same would occur here in America if we had mandatory voting.

Author and graduate student Vassia Stoilov argues “that more participation in elections does not automatically translate into more legitimacy for the elected government or into more representativeness in its policies and priorities.” For example, many totalitarian and authoritarian regimes such as the Soviet Union and Iraq under Saddam Hussein enforced compulsory voting. No one would argue that compulsory voting made these regimes legitimate democracies (P. 16).

Equally important, Stoilov writes that compulsory voting violates First Amendment rights to refrain from speaking (P.16).

Ornstein is willing to fun roughshod over civil liberties with mandatory voting in order to moderate political discourse. Stoilov doesn’t address the dangers haunting American democracy--power going to fringe groups-- because the process of mandatory voting violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Jimmy Carter's Mind

When I listed the worst presidents in history (here), I didn't put James E. Carter in the top five, though he certainly would have made my top ten. As president he was best known for rationalizing an American economic decline and leading a toothless foreign policy against the Soviets and Iranians. Like a carton of milk left too long in the refrigerator, his thinking has grown more rancid with age. His 2006 book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid,has been embraced by those on the far left and far right who believe that Israel's settlement policy after 1967 is the main obstacle to Middle East peace. Israel's neighbors have been trying to destroy her since 1948 and the Palestine Liberation Organization was formed in 1964, so Carter's thesis is not only one-sided; it is also wrong. (See my take on the Arab-Israeli peace process here.)

Never afraid of coddling the most despicable dictators, "Former President Jimmy Carter has sent North Korea a message of condolence over the death of Kim Jong-il and wished "every success" to the man expected to take over as dictator, according to the communist country's state-run news agency" (link here). This after serving as Bill Clinton's emissary in the 1990s and "stopping" North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

Now Carter has weighed in on the recent Egyptian elections. The article, Carter Pleased with Egypt Polls, found here, states that he

gave the thumbs up on Tuesday to Egypt's parliamentary elections, saying the people's will was "expressed accurately." "We have been very pleased," Carter told reporters during a tour of a polling station at the Rod al-Farag girls' secondary school in a working class district of the Egyptian capital. He said the election -- a three-staged process launched in November to choose the first parliament since mass protests forced former president Hosni Mubarak to quit -- had been peaceful despite "some problems. But in general the will of the people has been expressed accurately," he said on the eve of the end of the polls. 

OK. Well and good. The elections were fair. But now look what he says! "Asked about Islamists coming to power, Carter said: "I have no problem with that. The US government has no problem with that either."'

Carter has no problem with the end of civil liberties in Egypt. He has no problem with women and non-Muslims treated like chattel. He has no problem with Egypt turning into another Iran. And since when does he speak for the U.S. government?

He needs to keep up his good work building houses with Habitat for Humanity. He needs to stop propping up dictators and theocratic regimes. In sum, he needs to stay out of politics.

Update October 22, 2012: But he hasn't. He's back with his usual crew of Israel haters, blaming Israel for Middle East tensions as the missiles from Gaza rain down on Jewish cities. See the latest here.