A month ago, around the time of his Israel visit, Senator Barack Obama was voicing confidence that American Jews would turn out for him eventually. While polls showed that he enjoyed around 65 percent support among American Jews, well ahead of McCain but much less than previous Democratic presidential candidates, Obama told the most popular Israeli daily that he expected better results at the ballot boxes in November. "In my opinion, the Jews will come around by Election Day," he told Yediot Achronot.
One month later, he may not be so sure. The latest tracking polls of likely US voters shows that Obama's comfortable lead of July has slipped away and McCain has now opened a significant lead across the board.
Arab-American pollster James Zogby says that the news for Obama is "terrible" and that he should be plenty worried.
So when your overly ambitious dream is crumbling, and your audacious ways are in need of humbling, who you gonna call? High on Obama's short-list are liberal Jews.
This week the Obama campaign beefed up its Jewish outreach operation by adding a senior staff member to oversee ties with the Jewish community. Daniel Shapiro, who previously served as an outside advisor to the campaign on Middle East issues, formally joined the campaign as a full-time paid staffer to take charge of "Jewish outreach" efforts. He will carry the title of senior policy adviser and Jewish outreach coordinator, the campaign said.
Eric Lynn, who for the last year served as the campaign's liaison to the Jewish community, will continue his work under Shapiro. "The Obama campaign is reaching out aggressively to the Jewish community through the creation of Jewish Community Leadership Councils in cities around the country, and Dan joins National Jewish Vote Director Eric Lynn to augment and expand this outreach effort," an August 19 statement issued by the campaign read.
Shapiro, the Forward reports, "is a well-known figure in the Jewish political scene. He has been working with the Jewish community on behalf of the Obama campaign for the past year and was involved in all major events in which Senator Barack Obama spoke to the Jewish community. Shapiro also participated in Obama's trip to the Middle East and Israel."
"While he served on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration, most of his political career was spent working on Capitol Hill. He was deputy chief of staff for Senator Bill Nelson and worked on the staffs of Senator Dianne Feinstein and of Rep. Lee Hamilton, who chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee."
"The Obama campaign now has a staff of three dealing with the Jewish community. John McCain, on the other hand, does not have a designated staff member in charge of reaching out to the Jewish community."
Apparently, he doesn't think he needs one.
The Jewish Journal, anticipating a coronation at the Democratic National Convention in Denver -- perhaps prematurely -- says that Jews will feature prominently in the Colorado festivities. "The most prominent rabbinical participant at the Democratic convention will be Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, who will deliver the invocation on Aug. 28, when Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) accepts the nomination before a crowd of at least 70,000 at Denver's Invesco Stadium."
"Other Jewish clergyman slated to participated include Rabbis Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, the executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, who will deliver the keynote address at the interfaith event; Jack Moline, a Conservative rabbi from Alexandria, Va., who chairs the Interfaith Alliance, a coalition of faith groups that advocate for church-state separation; Amy Schwartzman, a Reform rabbi from Falls Church, Va.; Marc Schneier, an Orthodox rabbi from New York and a co-founder of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding; Steve Foster, a Reform rabbi in Denver; and Steve Gutow, a Reconstructionist rabbi who directs the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, a Jewish organizational public policy umbrella group."
Not all Democratic Jews are so thrilled, and some are considering crossing party lines to oppose Obama and back McCain. The most prominent is the first Jew to run of Vice President. As the Wall Street Journal reports, "It's hard to tell whom Joe Lieberman is causing more heartburn these days -- Democrats or Republicans. The Independent Democratic Senator has infuriated his Democratic colleagues because he's planning to speak at the Republican convention next month for his friend John McCain. Ask Mr. Lieberman -- the last of the Democratic foreign-policy hawks -- about Barack Obama's credentials to be President, and he pulls no punches."
In every significant interaction in Obama's adult life with those who distain and vilify Israel - from Rashid Khalidi to Reverend Jeremiah Wright to Louis Farrakhan - Obama has demonstrated passive resignation and indifference....
Some Jews are incapable of deluding themselves that Obama would be the most resolute candidate in defending Israel. In quiet moments of contemplation and in noisy debates with family members and friends, they worry about the tenuous nature of Israel's existence and the dangers which lurk from within and outside Israel's borders. These Jews cannot imagine a world without Israel and could not countenance election of a president who, in Israel's moment of peril, could well falter.
And that is why these obstinate Obama skeptics, some even after a lifetime of Democratic voting, will not pull the lever for him. For them some things rank higher than even the top items on the liberal political agenda. The risk is, in their minds, too great that when Israel needs help the most, Obama will buckle and Israel will be crushed.
But it appears that it's not only the Jews who are seeing the danger in an Obama presidency. Even Obama's core base among young people and Black Americans appears to be collapsing, with even the most extreme utterances of suspicion (some might say paranoia) finding expression and viral distribution in the notion gaining currency that the self-posessed man-who-won't-publish-his-birth certificate and may have held citizenship in as many as three nations (Indonesia, Kenya and the United Kingdom) other than the United States may be nothing less than a one-man "sleeper cell" that aims to infiltrate the oval office.
That notion, lampooned in The New Yorker and echoed in the McCain attack ads, may be taking root in the American psyche. It will be interesting to see whether the Jewish American community, always insecure despite its great wealth and influence, will continue its swing away from the Muslim-raised Obama and for the first time in its history opt for a Republican presidential candidate.
Perhaps he just needs to use a different telemarketing service?
