Jerry Slater (who supports Sam Nunn or Any General as Obama’s VP) says I’m being intemperate in my views of Jews and money in the presidential race:
I think your attack on the Salon article is overstated, and downright
intemperate.
I refer in particular to this passage: “there was a long
and simpleminded article about Obama’s efforts to cultivate Jews with
his acrobatics on Jerusalem and Israel. Typical of the leftish press,
Salon averred that Obama’s prize is… Florida. All those Jewish voters
in a swing state. That kind of statement borders on fraud.”
Jewish influence on politics is a function of a number of variables, not
just one or two, including (no particular order intended): (1) in close
elections, the Jewish vote in swing states or districts, (2)money, and
(3)general and genuine U.S. public sympathy with and support for both
both Jews and for Israel. True, the Salon story should have dealt with
the issue of whether Jewish contributions were a factor in Obama’s AIPAC
performance, and you are right to raise it–but as an addition to the
electoral vote consideration, not as a substitute for it.
Your throw-away line about how he doesn’t need Florida, so the
explanation has to be just money, is not persuasive. Just because he
has a “plan” to win the election without Florida and Ohio–if it comes
to that–doesn’t mean that he doesn’t desperately wish to carry both states.
The an analytical problem here is that what constitutes evidence of what
explains Obama on Israel. How can we know what is in Obama’s mind?
This requires great caution in making strong statements, in whatever
direction. That said, it is not at all implausible to speculate,
reasonably, that all three factors play a role in Obama’s thinking on
this issue–and even he might not be able to tell you how they were
weighted–that is, the Florida and perhaps Ohio vote, money, and perhaps
his own views (however simplistic you and I know them to be).
Slater is surely right that I was intemperate. I can be rash. I wrote what I wrote in a flash of disgust. But was I wrong? Not really. The issue for me here is the Complete and Utter removal of the question of Jewish money and influence from the press’s consideration of presidential politics/Middle East policy. I said yesterday it borders on fraud. I believe that today too. Reporters are refusing to talk about something they know to be a large factor in our politics, witness Ari Berman’s honest statement at the Center for Jewish History in May: “At the risk of stereotyping,” Berman said, “Jews
are influential beyond their numbers.” As donors, as media workers,
“influential in all these different areas.” And at the same panel, Samuel Freedman described Jews as members of an “overclass.” True. Readers ought to hear about this, rather than a continual refrain about Jewish voters in Florida.
Slater is surely right when he scores me for utterly discounting the Jewish vote in Florida and Ohio. It’s true that we don’t know what Obama’s strategy is, notwithstanding the reports that he’s discounted FL. And yes, Jews can make up a swing vote, they did in ’00. Obama right now seems to be going for every vote he can get, even in Montana, and collapsing on the Second Amendment to do so. (I think he is seeking a Reaganesque Landslide so he can declare that it’s morning in America).
The fallacy in Slater’s comments is his elision of the Jewish media presence as a factor in Obama’s thinking. And his claim that Americans love Israel. Maybe they do love Israel, but I am sure that only a few voters care about an undivided Jerusalem, and the vast majority of them are older Jews. The latest polls show that 71 percent of Americans want the U.S. to be evenhanded in its policy in the Middle East. As I have pointed out, a leftleaning Dem, Howard Dean, got his head handed to him for saying he wanted that, four years ago.
In 1968, Nixon got 17 percent of the Jewish vote, and was proud of it. He felt it made him impervious to the Jewish lobby. (So says William B. Quandt in Peace Process (1993)). Nixon was, per Slater’s view of Americans, a strong supporter of Israel. But he also wanted freedom to maneuver vis-a-vis the Soviet Union, by trying to win hearts and minds in the Arab world. That central prerogative of statecraft is one that No president has had since George H.W. Bush tried to exercise it in 1991. Obama’s craven statements before AIPAC merely recapitulate an old theme. And the question is why? Why would Nixon be impervious to the Jewish lobby–and Jewish vote–in ’68, while in ’92 Bill Clinton refused to criticize the illegal settlements and in ’04 Dean was decapitated for saying he wanted to be “evenhanded,” and in ’08 Obama has taken a position to the right of George W. Bush on the same question? I think the answer is yes in fairness, the Jewish vote in swing states, to some very small degree. But much more importantly Adelson and Saban, Jewish money; and more than that, the rise of Jews into the Establishment over the last 40 years. Nixon could write us off because we had far less power in American society. Today a candidate who writes off rightwing Jewish sentiment risks alienating the think tanks, the columnists, reporters and editors with unspoken Zionist agendas, not to mention a lot of moneybags.
Jerry, I wonder if you are afraid of such talk. I think your “intemperate” charge reflects some apprehension that if people start talking about Jewish money and power, especially in these economic times, there are going to be pogroms, a rise in antisemitism. I say I’m a journalist whose job is to describe reality–and my experience of antisemitism in this country is virtually nil, which is to say I trust my countrymen to talk about elites. What say you?
P.S. Jerry Slater says he’ll let his response stand for the time being. These issues are complex, and he deals with them in a long paper he’s preparing on Walt and Mearsheimer’s book. I look forward to that.
