The Republican upset victory in New York's 9th Congressional District by Bob Turner over David Weprin is being analyzed by both parties. A district that the Democrats took by 20% in the 2010 elections with Anthony Wiener as candidate, has now been lost by 8% --a mammoth 28% swing.
The Democrats are dragging out the Martha Coakley response that they used when, in early 2010, Scott Brown (R) took the Massachusetts Senate seat held by the Kennedy's since 1952. Following Coakley's defeat there, they heaped scorn on her talents as a candidate and now they are dissing Weprin as lackluster following his defeat.
They are also saying that they did not really put up a fight for the seats which will in any case be eliminated by redistricting.
This explanation does not tally with the facts. Given the current unpopularity of Barack Obama, the Democrats trotted out their biggest gun in the form of former president Bill Clinton, as well Chuck Schumer, the state's senior senator, and were willing to employ Independent Senator Joe Lieberman. It did not do them any good.
If Weprin was lackluster, Bob Turner was definitely not Scott Brown. Brown flew for a long time under the radar, but towards the end of the campaign he had become an attraction, thanks to his Lincolnesque height, his trademark pickup truck and his photogenic family. Turner is a 70-year-old who has never held public office and is likely never to go beyond his truncated term in the House of Representatives. The election therefore turned on the issues.
Some ultraliberal Jewish Democrats have been put in a bind. Over the past year, they have spread numerous stories repeating the Peter Beinart line that American Jewry is growing disenchanted with Israel and therefore Israel would be best advised to bend and make maximal concessions.
After the vote in the 9th district, these people are now scurrying for a response. If the Jewish vote for Turner was predicated on the assumption that Turner would be a more effective advocate for Israel, a subject that was much debated during the campaign, then the line that Israel was losing Jewish support had to be reevaluated, at the very least.
If the issue was not Israel, then the issue was Barack Obama, and therefore the vote represented a repudiation of the incumbent president. This is something that the ultraliberal Jewish sets find most unpalatable.
To avoid the no-win dilemma, the Democrats have come up with technical or personal explanations, such as the lame ones suggested above - Weprin as lackluster and the Democrats as not putting up a fight in a soon to be redistricted area - as well as additional ones.
One explanation is to dismiss the 9th district as "unrepresentative" due to the large number of Orthodox Jews who are registered voters in the district. If the Jewish voters were more liberal and more secular, then Obama's strength presumably would have still held. This theory has to contend with the areas such as Forest Hills where non-Orthodox Jews also defected from the Democratic column.
Then there is the 'message' excuse. Obama is presumably a true friend of Israel, but a small clique of Jewish conservatives have poisoned the minds of Jewish voters and are not allowing the true message to seep in. One would have expected the Jewish Democrats, having had three years to convince American Jewry about the "true nature" of the Israeli American relationship under Obama, would be prepared to drop this argument. It could only mean either they are totally inept in selling their message or that the target audience finds the message totally unconvincing.