In 2012, the Republican Jewish Coalition and various deep-pocketed donors -- some Jewish, some not -- spent tens of millions of dollars trying to convince Jewish voters that Obama was too anti-Israel to vote for, that he was secretly anti-Semitic, and that Jews would be wiser to vote against him. The result? Obama got "only" seventy percent of the Jewish vote, down from 74% in 2012. And given how Drumpf's stroking his anti-Semitic followers, it's not impossible that Clinton will get 85% or more of the Jewish vote in November.
But of course, you might say. The Jews are generally a liberal bunch, here and everywhere. A party on the left would have to work pretty damn hard to drive its Jewish vote under, say, sixty percent, wouldn’t it?
Well, try this. Earlier this month, the UK had a national round of local elections.
The Jewish vote for the Labour Party, by far the largest party on the left?
Labour has been embroiled in a major “row” over anti-Semitism since Corbyn took office last fall. The storm has been brewing for a long time, but Corbyn’s ineptitude has cracked it wide open. I'd like to like Corbyn more than I do. But the party leadership’s astonishingly tone-deaf attitude toward the Jews has metastasized the problem until it’s become a series of national headlines.
How do you screw up that badly? It's really -- well, see for yourself.