Kesher Talk

Bush and Kerry woo the Jews. Dueling editorials in the Jewish press:
Vote for Bush!
Vote for Kerry!

Bush's formal statement on Israel
Kerry's formal statement on Israel.

Bush is using the same approach to court the Jewish vote as he using to court Christians.

Jeff Ballabon, a 41-year-old Orthodox Jew and Bush Pioneer who helped organize the Brooklyn trip and the earlier briefing, argues that the events will resonate outside New York because haredim in different parts of the country are tightly connected. "They all read the same national papers," says Ballabon. "And ninety-five percent of them are published in New York. ... The Orthodox press for many is the primary source of news." The logic applies to non-haredi, modern Orthodox Jews as well. At the Bush campaign press briefing earlier in the day, Tevi Troy, an Orthodox Jewish campaign official, emphasizes that the assembled leaders, a mixture of haredi and modern Orthodox Jews, are "plugged into other cities"--"you know, people in Detroit, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Cleveland." He encourages them to "talk to your friends in other cities and tell them what the president is about."

And what does Bush want to tell those voters?

. . . even if John Kerry, who gets a stellar rating from AIPAC, is a reliable supporter of Israel, and even if he says he'd prosecute the war on terrorism aggressively, there are structural forces within the Democratic Party that make a Kerry administration dangerous. At just about every Jewish-themed event I attended this week--and there were multiple events each day--someone has drawn attention to the rise of the antiwar, anti-Israel left within the Democratic Party. Usually, the conversation begins with Michael Moore, who has left a long trail of anti-Israel comments, continues on to MoveOn.org and former supporters of Howard Dean, and ends with the observation that, in recent years, it has been the far left of the Democratic Party, not the far right of the Republican Party, that has been awol on votes in Congress regarding Israel.

"That's going to be a major theme going into the stretch run," says one Republican strategist. "The point is, who do you surround yourself with? ... [With the Kerry] campaign, the focus is on Michael Moore, Jimmy Carter." One Jewish Republican close to the White House, who occasionally serves as a Bush campaign surrogate, told me he makes this pitch explicitly. "Even if Kerry means everything he says about Israel," he tells Jewish audiences, "the question is whether his constituency--today's Democratic Party--would really let him go there."

During the GOP convention, Republican legislators were reaching out to Jewish groups around the city. More on Bush's plans to target particular Jewish communities in swing states.

A cute cross-partisan Jewish romance.

UPDATE: Allison Kaplan-Sommer is in town visiting her American family for the holidays, and writes an op-ed for a Jersey paper about trying to figure out who to vote for, and whether to vote, as an Israeli-American living in Israel. Read the whole post, which includes her op-ed, and her liberal family's opinions on her op-ed ("Well, did you have to point out to all the Jews in New Jersey that Bush has been supportive of Israel? You're giving them a reason to vote for him."), which continues into a spirited argument in the comments.

posted by Judith @ 9/29/2004 10:22:06 AM