Part of Karl Rove’s master plan is peeling off parts of key Democratic-leaning constituencies and melding them with the GOP’s base among conservative whites. It is remarkable, however, how little progress has actually been made, especially in relation to Republican claims about such progress.
This week comes further evidence that Republicans have not succeeded in making much of a dent in a small, but significant, part of the Democratic coalition: Jewish voters. According to data released by Ipsos Public Affairs/Cook Political Report, in the first quarter of 2003, Jews gave Bush an overall approval rating of 39 percent, an economic job approval rating of 26 percent, and a domestic issues approval rating of 24 percent. Wow. They clearly haven’t drunk the Rove Kool-Aid yet. Guess that’s why Bush’s hard re-elect (definitely vote to re-elect) among these voters was just 22 percent, less than half of the number (45 percent) who said they would definitely vote for someone else. And why they give Democrats a staggering 72 percent to 24 percent lead on the generic Congressional ballot question and declare their partisanship as Democratic by more than 3:1 (67 percent to 22 percent).
The Democrats have a lot of things to worry about. But declining support among Jewish voters doesn’t appear to be one of them.
This year’s big media narrative has been the confirmation saga of Neera Tanden, Biden’s nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget. At New York I wrote about how over-heated the talk surrounding Tanden has become.
Okay, folks, this is getting ridiculous. When a vote in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on the nomination of Neera Tanden was postponed earlier this week, you would have thought it presented an existential threat to the Biden presidency. “Scrutiny over Tanden’s selection has continued to build as the story over her uneven reception on Capitol Hill stretched through the week,” said one Washington Post story. Politico Playbook suggested that if Tanden didn’t recover, the brouhaha “has the potential to be what Biden might call a BFD.” There’sbeen all sorts of unintentionally funny speculation about whether the White House is playing some sort of “three-dimensional chess” in its handling of the confirmation, disguising a nefarious plan B or C.
Perhaps it reflects the law of supply and demand, which requires the inflation of any bit of trouble for Biden into a crisis. After all, his Cabinet nominees have been approved by the Senate with a minimum of 56 votes; the second-lowest level of support was 64 votes. One nominee who was the subject of all sorts of initial shrieking, Tom Vilsack, was confirmed with 92 Senate votes. Meanwhile, Congress is on track to approve the largest package of legislation moved by any president since at least the Reagan budget of 1981, with a lot of the work on it being conducted quietly in both chambers. Maybe if the bill hits some sort of roadblock, or if Republican fury at HHS nominee Xavier Becerra (whose confirmation has predictably become the big fundraising and mobilization vehicle for the GOP’s very loud anti-abortion constituency) reaches a certain decibel level, Tanden can get out of the spotlight for a bit.
But what’s really unfair — and beyond that, surreal — is the extent to which this confirmation is being treated as more important than all the others combined, or indeed, as a make-or-break moment for a presidency that has barely begun. It’s not. If Tanden cannot get confirmed, the Biden administration won’t miss a beat, and I am reasonably sure she will still have a distinguished future in public affairs (though perhaps one without much of a social-media presence). And if she is confirmed, we’ll all forget about the brouhaha and begin focusing on how she does the job, which she is, by all accounts, qualified to perform.
