Will Difference Between Obama 2012 and Obama 2008 Make Jewish Vote Irrelevant?

A sitting president of the United States, seeking reelection, can’t lay out a plan that will gain a single vote in the House or Senate for the financial future of America. It speaks volumes.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AK), ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee

Yedidya Atlas describes how we have seen that Obama has to resort to Smoke and Mirrors on the Campaign Trail

In his April 18th column for RealClearPolitics, Senior Elections Analyst Sean Trende notes that the upcoming presidential elections between the incumbent, Democratic President Barack Obama, and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, will be, as usual, “a referendum on the party in power.” That is, President Obama will be running, whether he wants to or not (and he clearly doesn’t), on his performance record.


Considering Mr. Obama’s poor presidential performance, particularly in the key area of the economy, he will have a difficult time selling his self-trumped-up success in turning around the economy since the great crash in September 2008 – the very crash that leveraged him into the White House (“everything is Bush’s fault”) – no matter what is written on his cue cards.

Without a doubt, Team Obama agrees, and their strategy is a combination of Mr. Obama running as if he isn’t the incumbent (“everything is always someone else’s fault” – President Bush, Congress, the Republican majority in the House, anybody and everybody who isn’t Barack Obama), and at the same time, trying to impugn the good name and record of his Republican challenger, Mr. Romney, so the voters will prefer Mr. Obama by comparison.

This explains the Bain Capital ads and other similar attacks. But, like everything else Team Obama has tried in the last two months, this strategy seems to have backfired.

Read the whole thing.

In past presidential elections, it has been clear that no matter how Jewish Democratic voters responded to polls, no matter how strongly they said they identified with Israel and supported Israel's right to exist with secure borders--at the end of the day, it was issues like the economy that were way in front in determining who they voted for.

But in this case, where many Jewish democrats seem to still believe that Obama is a friend--if not the best friend ever--of Israel, the issue of the economy may very well serve to diminish the support of the Jewish vote that Obama is so clearly pursuing.

With each passing day, we find new ways that the Obama campaign of 2012 is very, very different from the Obama campaign 2008.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Election 2012 and Obama.