I've been wondering for a long, long time, given Barack Obama's longstanding hostility toward the Jewish State, what it was going to take to finally get Jewish voters' attention that The One was not, after all, their friend.
Now, at last, we appear to have our answer:
The rift — aggravated by a nuclear deal with Iran and sour relations between Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — will likely have political implications in the 2016 elections, the Wall Street Journal reports.
"At this moment in time, many American Jews who have consistently voted Democrat are beginning to waver in that support, because they've felt the bedrock relationship between Israel and this administration has been severely shaken," Rabbi Howard Buechler, of the Dix Hills Jewish Center in New York, told the Journal.
See what I mean about this obtusity? What Rabbi Buechler should have said was "the bedrock relationship between Israel and this country". There's never been anything but a hostile "relationship" between Israel and this "administration," and that hostility has always flowed in one direction - and it didn't originate in Jerusalem.
Republicans think the shift in loyalties could influence key Senate races in Florida and the Philadelphia and Chicago suburbs, the Journal reports.
Meaning holding Marco Rubio's seat if he's on Scott Walker's 2016 GOP ticket, and what would otherwise look like tough holds for Pat Toomey and Mark Kirk.
Remember those Dems who either didn't bother to show up for Bibi's State of the Middle East address a month ago or got up and walked out during it? That may not have been so smooth of a move either:
Other Democrats worry that Jewish voters may want to punish some Democratic House and Senate members who boycotted Netanyahu's address to a joint session of Congress last month.
"Many fellow Democrats of the Jewish faith were appalled" that lawmakers didn't show the prime minister "the respect and courtesy of being in the audience," Democrat fundraiser Leonard Barrack told the Journal.
Something that would have cost them so little. I mean, it's not like earplugs would be visible on C-SPAN or (whatever) network cameras. Just show up, sit down, plug in, and watch one of the Iron Man movies on your [insert name of handheld wireless device here]. That's what I'd do if I was in Congress and had to report for a State of The One show. Probably Iron Man II, specifically the scene where Tony Stark is testifying before Senator Stern's committee and making such a fool of the Chucky Schumer clone that the latter drops consecutive F-bombs into a live mic. I always thought Gary Shandling nailed the typical sanctimonious Donk senator. One of my favorite scenes in the history of cinema. You can guarantee that he would have skipped Bibi's speech.
But while some Dems might be belatedly starting to care.....
New York-17 Democrat Representative Nita Lowey — at a meeting last week between Jewish Democratic House members and White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough about the need for the president to "increase his popularity with our constituents," according to one participant — told the Journal she didn't like what she was hearing from the White House after Netanyahu's election.
"I was extremely disturbed by some of the overheated rhetoric that came out of the administration following the [Israeli] election," she told the Journal. "I conveyed directly to the White House that it's time to dial back the temperature and affirm and strengthen the U.S.-Israeli relationship."
....Barack Obama certainly doesn't and never will. Why else, after all, is he steadily replacing that constituency spot with the Jews' principle demographic enemy?
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