Democrats Panic Over Jewish Voters

Biden’s betrayal of Israel may end up costing him the election

By Daniel Greenfield, FRONT PAGE    24 May 2024

After tossing Jewish voters overboard to accommodate the Hamas supporters of Dearborn, Michigan, the Democrats are starting to get nervous about the choice they made.Despite the rollout of the campaign, beginning with Senator Schumer’s floor speech blasting Israel, and various liberal Jewish surrogates, including Rep. Jerry Nadler, vocally opposing the campaign against Hamas, the Democrats did not manage to sell Jews on Biden’s betrayal.

Biden’s declaration that he would stop providing military support to Israel if it continued to pursue Hamas into Rafah touched off a major backlash from donors, like Haim Saban, from celebrities, like Michael Rappaport, who has said he could vote for Trump, and ordinary Jews.

While there’s no accurate polling of Jewish voters because there are too few Jews in much of the country to be captured by conventional polls and polls specifically surveying Jews are usually run by leftist groups, Democrats have suddenly begun to sweat the Jewish vote.

And that speaks volumes.

The Jewish Democratic Council of America, which usually complacently assumes that Republicans are not actual competition, has been sending out a series of panicked emails the latest of which is headlined, “How to Persuade Your Friends that Trump is Not the Answer”.

It concludes with, “Our work to ensure the Jewish electorate supports Joe Biden and Democrats has never been more important.”

It doesn’t take much to read between the lines and smell the fear.

A story at the militantly anti-Trump site The Bulwark described Biden’s betrayal as “an inflection point” in the presidential race that sent Jewish donors to Trump. And even those who aren’t backing Trump increasingly aren’t backing Biden.

“The conversations I’ve had with donors is that they want to stop donating to Biden or Democrats,” Rep. Jared Moskowitz related. “They’re not talking about turning on the spigot for Trump, it’s turning off the spigot for us. Some are billionaires. Some are millionaires. And a few have told me they’re not contributing to Trump but they might vote for him. The question is whether this is irreparable. I hope not. The next several months will determine that.”

After Biden’s refusal to help Israel defeat Hamas in its stronghold in Rafah, the JDCA initially issued a statement backing him up only to later backtrack and claim that “there are reasons to disagree with the administration’s recent decision to halt a single arms transfer to Israel.”

The JDCA had clearly lost the argument even among its own supporters and donors.

When Sen. Schumer arrived at the JDCA leadership summit which was meant to pitch Jews  on the party, he had left behind the attacks on Israel’s campaign against Hamas, and the ‘born again shomer’ blasted Hamas and the media.

“Jewish voters have always found a home in the Democratic Party year after year,” Schumer pleaded. “Make no mistake, this year the Jewish American vote will make all the difference.“

In the JDCA newsletter, Democrat political consultant Steve Sheffey shakily argued that, “considering voting for Donald Trump because you’re concerned about something Joe Biden did is like asking how the chicken is cooked. But that’s what the loud low-information segment of our community is telling us to do when they tell us to vote for Donald Trump.”

What he was really revealing was that there is a movement of Jews switching to Trump.

“There are two types of people in our community: Those who desperately want to believe the worst about Biden and those who feel relieved, not cheated, to find out that in reality, Biden is good for Israel,” the Democrat consultant condescendingly tried to persuade Jews.

Jews tend to vote Democrat. Where did this sudden influx of Jews who “desperately want to believe the worst about Biden” come from? They came from Biden’s betrayal of the Jews.

And now Jewish Democrats are frantically lying, spinning and gaslighting Jews.

Schumer wouldn’t have to tell Jews that they will make “all the difference”, and the JDCA wouldn’t have to send out talking points for friends thinking of voting Trump if it wasn’t happening. And rather than honestly addressing it, Jewish Democrats have been gaslighting.

The JDCA’s Sheffey insisted that Biden’s arm embargo was just “one non-critical arms shipment designed to send a signal” after he had previously promised that the “White House has no red lines that would trigger restrictions on arms to Israel”. But now arms have to be restricted because Israel finishing off Hamas was “a major disincentive for Hamas to enter into any peace deal”.

And for any Jewish Democrats still not convinced that by cutting off arms to Israel to force a “peace deal” with the butchers and rapists of Oct 7, Biden had Israel’s best interests at heart, he quoted Jennifer Rubin urging Jews to “rethink knee-jerk objections to Biden’s efforts”.

There’s no way that Biden is “trying to mollify some anti-Israel fringe in the Democratic Party”, Sheffey insisted, even as the Hamas campus riots were in full swing. “Biden’s support for Israel remains ironclad… The Democratic Party remains staunchly pro-Israel. Good politicians know their base. Biden has been in politics for decades. He knows his.” This is wishful thinking.

He urged Jewish Democrats to ignore any “references to arms embargoes, loving Hamas, betrayal” and to “delete them and don’t engage — those people cannot be reasoned with.”

The common theme among Biden loyalists is that American Jews should ignore their eyes and ears, and stop being so picky, that they need to trust the party and ignore all the red flags.

And yet after months of going on the offense against Trump, Dems are playing defense.

Jewish Dems have been struggling to justify Biden’s betrayal and, like Sheffey, they’re terrible at it. Forced to actually defend Biden’s record, instead of just attacking Trump as a threat to democracy, they flail, condescend, and insult their own base while trying to avert a crisis.

And the crisis is a catastrophic Jewish loss of support for Biden.

Biden was never popular among Jews. Many just voted the party line. But like other parts of the Democrat base, including black and Latino voters, the allegiance is fracturing under stress.

Facing blowback, the Biden administration has dialed back its criticism of Israel, but there are signs that this is a temporary maneuver meant to reassure Jews long enough to win an election.

On a Project Veritas video, Sterlin Waters, a National Security Council policy advisor told the undercover reporter that “there’s a huge, powerful Jewish influence in Republican and Democrat politics” and that Biden is waiting for a second term to confront them and to oppose Israel.

Bill Ackman, a liberal Democrat hedge fund manager, who had come out against Biden over wokeness and his Israel policy, responded by tweeting, “Unmasking the Biden administration Israel strategy. I respect his candor.” While some Jews may be fooled, others are waking up.

And the Democrats are panicking because they’re in trouble with voters they’ve taken for granted since FDR. A poll from earlier this year found that a majority of Jews in New York were backing Trump, and while he won’t win New York, the Jewish vote twice helped him win Florida.

A Voice of America story warned that “more Jews have been voting Republican in recent elections” and that “Jewish voters could sway the presidential election.”

Biden’s betrayal of Israel may end up costing him the election.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.