Jerusalem Platform Fuss Won’t Dim Obama Advantage on Jewish Voter Priorities

Last updated on 2012.09.08

Knowing they can't win on policy, my Republican friends are making a stink about the snafu over Jerusalem in the Democratic national platform. They want to believe that the fact that the Dems in Charlotte would even consider removing Jerusalem from the platform means they've lost the Jewish vote:

And to those rich Jewish donors, saying Jerusalem isn't the capital of Israel, that it's just another city and that it can be divided up - well you might as well just surrender to Hamas right now [P&R, "Democrats Got Trouble with Capital G and a Capital J," P&R Miscellany, September 6, 2012].

Golf-course Senator Dan Lederman (R-16/Dakota Dunes), a significant percentage of South Dakota's Jewish population, said on Twitter that "Jewish Democrats cannot ignore this convention's lack of commitment to Israel and Obama omitting the name Jerusalem in his speech."

Actually, Dan, they probably can, and they likely will. The Jerusalem language is a bipartisan charade. The Obama Administration has maintained the same American policy on Jerusalem that Presidents of both parties have maintained since before Israel became its own state.

Jewish American voters know this. The presence or absence of "Jerusalem" in a party platform will have much less impact on their presidential vote than will other issues. 7% of Jewish American voters ranked Israel among their top two voting concerns in 2010. Seven issues were cited as top concerns by more Jewish voters: the economy, health care, the deficit and government spending, Social Security and Medicare, taxes, terrorism and national security, and education.

A March 2012 survey by the American Jewish Committee found similar results. In that survey, U.S.-Israel relations tied for fifth with Social Security on Jewish American voters' list of issues that will guide their presidential vote this year, behind the economy, health care, national security, and taxes. (Dem bonus, Democrats outnumber Republicans among Jewish American voters 3 to 1.)

Given these Jewish voter priorities, Mitt Romney kissed the Jewish vote goodbye when he nominated Paul Ryan for VP:

In a study last month for the Solomon Project, Mark Mellman, Aaron Strauss, and Kenneth Wald noted an interesting historical trend. In every election between 1972 and 1988, Republicans won at least 30 percent of the Jewish vote. Since then, they've always been in the low 20s or teens. The most plausible answer is that when the Cold War ended and people like Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, and even Ronald Reagan handed over the reins of the Republican Party to the likes of Newt Gingrich, George W. Bush, and Sarah Palin, the GOP swung right. Conservative Christian evangelicals gained unprecedented power, and a new generation of Republican leaders began to challenge the foundations of the American welfare state in a way their predecessors would never have dared.

Romney's best hope for reversing the GOP's declining Jewish fortunes would have been to remind American Jews of the cultural and economic moderation he showed as Massachusetts governor. Indeed, were he still the Romney of a decade ago—pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-gay rights, and pro-universal health coverage—he might be on his way to grabbing 40 percent of the Jewish vote. But any trace of that Romney died when he chose Ryan. The race for the American Jewish vote is now probably over [Peter Beinart, "Romney Lost the American Jewish Vote by Picking Paul Ryan," The Daily Beast, August 14, 2012].

President Obama and the Democratic Party have won praise from the American Jewish Committee for reinserting the Jerusalem language into the platform. But the President, the party, and the majority of Jewish voters understand that they have much bigger gefilte fish to fry than this platform language, and that President Obama will fry that fish much better than will Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.