{"id":4966,"date":"2008-09-29T01:43:45","date_gmt":"2008-09-28T22:43:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=4966"},"modified":"2008-11-16T02:49:44","modified_gmt":"2008-11-15T23:49:44","slug":"obama-fights-%e2%80%98jewish-problem%e2%80%99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2008\/09\/29\/obama-fights-%e2%80%98jewish-problem%e2%80%99\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama fights \u2018Jewish problem\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

BY CHRIS MEGERIAN Cox News Service<\/p>\n

Illinois Senator Barack Obama appears to have less support from Jews than previous Democratic candidates.<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 Halie Soifer is building an army.<\/p>\n

Assembled in her Delray Beach office are more than 20 people, mostly seniors and all\u00a0Jewish<\/span>, who have been drafted into the campaign to elect Barack Obama president.<\/p>\n

Each of them is armed with a series of talking points and a pin with the candidate\u2019s name in Hebrew. Then they are deployed to the condominiums and gated communities of Palm Beach County.<\/p>\n

CRUCIAL VOTES<\/p>\n

For Soifer, the campaign\u2019s\u00a0Jewish<\/span>\u00a0vote director in Florida, these are some of her most crucial foot soldiers.<\/p>\n

Palm Beach County Jews are becoming a battleground demographic in a battleground state. That\u2019s because Obama could have\u00a0the least\u00a0Jewish<\/span>\u00a0support of any Democratic presidential candidate\u00a0since Jimmy Carter faced Ronald Reagan in 1980.<\/p>\n

A national poll released Thursday by the American\u00a0Jewish<\/span>\u00a0Committee has him leading McCain 57 to 30 percent among\u00a0Jewish<\/span>\u00a0voters, with 13 percent undecided.<\/p>\n

\n

The numbers are evidence of how Jews have trended, if only slightly, to the political right in recent years.<\/p>\n

Republicans have been gaining ground in the last few presidential elections. From 1992 to 2004, the percentage of Jews voting Republican doubled to 22 percent.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith Obama polling at historic lows among\u00a0Jewish<\/span>\u00a0voters, this kind of shift in a close election could have an important impact in the outcome of the race,\u201d said Matthew Brooks, president of the Republican\u00a0Jewish<\/span>Coalition.<\/p>\n

OBAMA\u2019S \u2018PROBLEM\u2019<\/p>\n

Obama has been accused of having a \u201cJewish<\/span>\u00a0problem\u201d ever since polls showed greater\u00a0Jewish<\/span>support for Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., in the primary battle. Conservative critics say his willingness to meet with Iranian President Ahmadinejad, an idea the RJC calls \u201cnaive and dangerous,\u201d is evidence of his lax support for Israel. It\u2019s an image he\u2019s sought to dispel, repeatedly stating his opposition to a nuclear armed Iran.<\/p>\n

On Sept. 8, his campaign announced the launch of six Obama\u00a0Jewish<\/span>\u00a0Community Leadership Committees in Florida to directly engage voters on a grass-roots level.<\/p>\n

Kenneth Wald, a political science professor at the University of Florida who studies\u00a0Jewish<\/span>\u00a0voting behavior, said\u00a0Jewish<\/span>\u00a0voters have simply been unfamiliar with Obama, some knowing little more than he has an Arabic middle name, Hussein.\u00a0\u201cThere is a question [whether] someone of that background will be someone that Jews will feel comfortable with,\u201d\u00a0Wald said.<\/p>\n

Source: Miami Herald Sunday, 28 Sep 2008<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY CHRIS MEGERIAN Cox News Service Illinois Senator Barack Obama appears to have less support from Jews than previous Democratic candidates. WASHINGTON \u2014 Halie Soifer is building an army. Assembled in her Delray Beach office are more than 20 people, mostly seniors and all\u00a0Jewish, who have been drafted into the campaign to elect Barack Obama […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":43842,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148,34],"tags":[145,711],"class_list":["post-4966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","category-usa","tag-barack-obama","tag-jewish-votes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}