Tevi Troy at National Review follows up on my critique of his analysis of the McLaughlin-Caddell poll, and says what I and the Washington Post’s Adam Serwer may be missing is that the poll is a self-fulfilling prophecy:
Politicians often recognize the value of these issue-oriented polls, while journalists frown on the ones that don’t correspond to their worldview. According to Robinson’s analysis, the McLaughlin-Caddell poll is clearly in the latter camp and suggests that Obama could be in trouble with the Jewish vote — and remember, trouble with the Jewish vote means he gets less than 70 percent of it — if the Republicans frame the case against him on Israel in an effective way.
I can’t disagree — if Republicans successfully define Obama on Israel to Jews, he’s gonna hurt in 2012. I would say, unscientifically, by about 5 points — that’s how much George W. Bush gained, from 19-24 percent, between 2000 and 2004.
I simply can’t think of a single other reason for Jews who did not vote for Bush in 2000 to have voted for him in 2004. The same issues that would have made Jewish Democrats and Independents uncomfortable in 2000 — threats to the safety net, the prospect of conservative Supreme Court judges, among many others — were even more pronounced four years later.
Five points is not nothing, especially in swing states like Florida — but it’s not the double digit swings that Republicans have attributed to Obama’s Israel policies.
My problem with the McLaughlin-Caddell poll is that it is part of the framing of Obama, and not an accurate reflection of where Jews are at now.
UPDATE: Or, as Shmuel Rosner puts it at the Jerusalem Post:
Take a look at the way this question is framed…
Should Israel be forced to return to its pre-1967 borders which were susceptible to attack at points where the country was only 8 miles wide?
That is not a way to ask a question – that’s an attempt, not even remarkably sophisticated, to make people uneasy with Obama’s position. And one wonders: We’re 16 months ahead of election day and it already began – how many such polls are we going to have to deal with before November of 2012?
I also think Tevi’s right that, at least from the perspective of July 2011, it doesn’t look like Obama hits the 78 percent he got in 2008. That, I think, has almost everything to do with the economy, but at Tablet, Dan Klein points out a pattern I overlooked: Incumbents tend to lose Jews second time around:
If Barack Obama flew to Israel to offer Benjamin Netanyahu a back rub, he would lose Jewish voters. If he raised, lowered, or kept taxes the same, he would lose Jewish voters. If he learned Yiddish or put a menorah on the flag, he would lose Jewish voters.
For more than 30 years, every incumbent president running for re-election, with a single exception, has lost Jewish supporters in his second campaign.
The exception is Bush.
I’m not sure about the Yiddish though — Michele Bachmann seems to think it helps.
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