My post at Greg's place on Gallup's latest survey of American Jewish voters, showing that Obama's Israel speech was "not a Watershed in Jewish Views."
Republicans have been pushing this meme hard with a series of distortions Greg has been knocking down. First there was the bogus story that Israeli American billionaire Haim Saban had “broken” with Obama, despite having never donated to him in the first place. Saban actually stuck up for Obama against right-wing distortions of his position on Israel. Then there was the cooked up Washington Times story reporting that the Obama administration’s supposed “bullying” of Israel had been revealed on a recent conference call, which people on the call claimed was false. Aside from attempting to push the “Jews are abandoning Obama” storyline, the purpose of these stories is to strengthen Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s hand politically as he avoids making any effort to reconcile the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even has he offers superficial verbal support for a two-state solution.
Maybe support for Obama among Jews will ultimately erode, and stories suggesting that's the case are ahead of the curve. The evidence, however, suggests the exact opposite — Jewish voters remain firmly in the Democratic camp, and they're not going anywhere anytime soon. But no matter — “Jews abandoning Democrats” is one of those zombie memes sustained by the futile efforts of Jewish conservatives to make it a self-fulfilling prophesy, and as long as it remains a seductive storyline for political reporters and commentators, it'll never die no matter how many times it's shown to be false.
David Weigel reads the same Gallup piece and concludes that the 60 percent approval following the Israel speech represents "one of the great own-goals of the Obama presidency," citing the fact that Obama and John Kerry each got around 80 percent of the Jewish vote.
Nonwithstanding the fact that Gallup finds "no significant nor sustained shift in Jewish Americans' views toward Obama," approval and votes are not the same thing. We also don't know to what extent Jewish views on Obama are impacted by his views on Israel. It could very well be that the statistically small dip in Jewish approval is the result of some Jews being disillusioned lefties who think Obama is a disappointment because he hasn't been liberal enough, broadly speaking.
