‘Hill’ says Iran deal could alienate Democrats’ ‘pillar’– ‘big Jewish donors’

All I’ve ever asked for: honest reporting about the source of the lobby’s power. The Hill’s headline is “Iranian nuclear deal strains Obama’s relations with big Jewish donors.” Some of Alexander Bolton’s story:

The Iran nuclear deal has put new strains on President Obama’s relationship with Jewish donors, a pillar of Democratic fundraising.

Obama attacked the issue head-on, telling about 120 donors who paid $16,200 per person to attend the dinner at Saban’s sprawling estate that the agreement with Iran opens “the prospect that we’ll be able to, through peaceful, diplomatic means, remove this cloud that has hovered over the Middle East that had the potential and continues to have the potential of triggering a nuclear arms race in the most volatile region of the world.”

 

120 times 16,200 is nearly $2 million. At the home of a Democrat who loves Israel and is a huge supporter of the Clintons. Yes, Saban is supportive of the deal; but maybe this explains why Obama called Jewish organizational leaders to lay out the deal, including the ADL,which has been criticizing him at every turn. What power does the ADL have over Obama: essentially, an ethnic appeal he must be cognizant of. Why can’t the Times write about this every day? We all know how important it is.

Some of Bolton’s roll-call of Democrats who are alarmed by the deal:

Rob Fox, a Democratic fundraiser who supports federal candidates in Pennsylvania, slammed the deal…

Jeff Robbins, a Democratic lawyer and fundraiser based in Boston, said many Jewish Democrats agree with Schumer.

“There is a strong concern that in the frenetic eagerness to secure a piece of paper, an eagerness that could not have been more ostentatiously advertised, the United States and others went for a deal which was not consistent with the leverage that was had.”

He said that, in pursuit of a deal, the administration took “crude, petulant and harmful swipes at Israel” that were “difficult to understand from a friend.”

Robbins also criticized Secretary of State John Kerry’s claim that Israeli officials were disparaging the emerging deal without being fully briefed on its details.

“Stuff that seems aimed of fomenting a view of those who are concerned about Israel as somehow obsessive-compulsive or worse,” he said.

And last night Chris Matthews and David Corn repeatedly slammed neoconservatives and Republicans for opposing the Iran deal. What is that saying about Get your own house in order first? They are mystifying the actual political sources of this dysfunction. And note: Obama just raised $1 million at the Philadelphia home of Matthews’s boss, David Cohen of Comcast, with a lot of Jewish shtik.

Sullivan is mystified:

And here is Senator Chuck Schumer, vowing to destroy the foreign policy of a president of his own party by urging – along with others – that the Senate do what it can – again – to sabotage the president’s careful negotiations with a foreign power, which are clearly part of his executive responsibilities:

This level of open sabotage against the American president – decried by Democrats when it was the GOP attempting to bring down the global economy, and lamented when it meant gutting the president’s ability to appoint judges to vacant seats, and denigrated when Republican governors refuse to expand Medicaid – is nonetheless subject to no push-back at all when it comes to the Middle East. I still don’t get it. But I guess I never will.

Andrew, I think you do get it. Because if we are honest, we must speak of what David Remnick described on Charlie Rose the other night — on a program where he decried the absence of Palestinian voices — rightwing Jewish “pressure” and “influence.”