Might Israel-related missteps sway Jewish voters and cost Harris the election? - analysis

With just over a week left before the US presidential election, Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump remain, according to the polls, in a dead heat.

A shift of a percentage point, or even less, in one of the swing states – defined as a state that in the recent past has voted for one candidate in one election and another in the next – can make all the difference in a razor-tight contest. The opposite of a swing state is a stable state – such as California, New York, and Illinois, which vote consistently Democratic, or Texas, Louisiana, and Kansas, which vote consistently Republican.

The seven swing states very much in play this year are Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada.

Given that the election is so close, and that there are significant Jewish communities relative to the general population in all but two of them – Wisconsin and North Carolina – and given that Jews traditionally turn out to vote more than any other ethnic group, it is understandable why both candidates are actively courting the Jewish vote.

However, if, in the end, Harris loses a close election, there will be those who look back at certain actions her campaign or the Biden-Harris administration took regarding Israel over the last few months and conclude this is a factor that cost her a few valuable percentage points among Jews, and which – in key states – may have cost her the election.

ACCORDING TO a poll released by the respected conservative Manhattan Institute this week, Harris is on track to underperform among Jews, while Trump is on course to do better than he did in 2020 when he took 30% of the Jewish vote, the best since any Republican candidate since George H.W. Bush in 1988 when he also won 30% of the Jewish vote against Michael Dukakis.

According to this poll of 658 registered Jewish voters between October 5-9, were the elections held today, 67% of Jews would vote for Harris, and 31% for Trump. Though this continues the trend of massive Jewish support for the Democrats, the same poll showed that 27% of the respondents voted for Trump in the last election. A 4% increase among Jews in Georgia or Arizona for Trump – where US President Joe Biden won by fewer than 12,000 votes in each state – could be fateful for the election.

Harris addresses heckler

The latest Harris misstep on Israel took place at a campaign rally at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on Saturday, where her comments were interrupted by a keffiyeh-clad heckler who repeated the lie that Israel was committing genocide and that 42,000 people were dead in Gaza, including “19,000 children.”

After the heckler was ushered out, the vice president said: “Listen, what he’s talking about, it’s real. That’s not the subject that I came to discuss today, but it’s real, and I respect his voice.”

It was not clear what Harris thought was “real”: the claim of genocide, or the numbers the heckler quoted. But that was not the most problematic part of her response. That designation went to her saying, “I respect his voice.”

That was the wrong answer, as not every voice deserves respect. If she were interrupted not by a pro-Hamas heckler but by an anti-gay rights activist who shouted at her that gays should be denied civil rights, would she have said, “I respect his voice”?

Obviously not.

Likewise, there is no need to respect the voice of someone repeating a modern-day incarnation of the accusation that “Jews are poisoning the wells.” Rather than respecting that voice, it needs to be called out for what it is: a blatant, pernicious lie.

Harris, despite the disquiet this caused in some Jewish circles, has not publicly commented on the issue, though her campaign told reporters who asked that the heckler’s remarks do not reflect “the position of the Biden-Harris administration or the vice president’s stance.”

This was not the first time, however, that Harris let the genocide libel against Israel just hang there in the public square.

In 2021, well before October 7 and the war with Hamas, Harris was speaking to another student group, this time at Virginia’s George Mason University, when she didn’t object when a student repeated the genocide libel.

“Just a few days ago there were funds allocated to continue backing Israel, which hurts my heart because it’s ethnic genocide and displacement of people, the same that happened in America, and I’m sure you’re aware of this,” the student said.

Harris’s response was not to tell the student her facts were dead wrong and she was maliciously libeling Israel, but to talk about how her truth must be heard.

Harris said she was glad the student spoke up, saying, “Your voice, your perspective, your experience, your truth should not be suppressed.”

Wrong answer, again.

Not every “truth” should be heard or legitimized by the vice president of the United States. Not everyone is entitled to their own truth. Not everything is a narrative. There are facts, and one fact is that Israel is not committing ethnic genocide – Harris should be able to say that.

SATURDAY’S INCIDENT, however, was just the latest example of some puzzling choices Harris and the current administration have made when it comes to Israel and the Jews over the last three months.

The first was her non-selection in early August of Pennsylvania’s Jewish Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate, opting instead for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

There are myriad reasons why Harris might have selected Walz over Shapiro, but one that gained traction is not that he was Jewish, but rather that he was an unapologetic Jewish supporter of Israel. This fact prompted a campaign against him waged from the far Left of the Democratic Party.

Bypassing Shapiro may, in retrospect, come to be seen as a mistake. First of all, Walz comes from a state that Harris has in her pocket, Minnesota, while Pennsylvania is very much in play. Although, historically, the state the vice president hails from does little to help a ticket, even if in this case it would help by just a few thousand votes, that could make a difference. (Biden won Pennsylvania by 80,000 votes in 2020.)

Secondly, Shapiro is a conservative Democrat, while Walz is a progressive one. While Harris has a lock on the progressives, the undecided Democratic voters are those on the Right and conservative flank of the party.

Thirdly, the aftertaste this left in the mouths of some Jews – that Shapiro was not chosen because of his identity and his support for Israel – may turn off enough Jews to make a difference again in a close election.

About a week after picking Walz, Harris then selected Ilan Goldenberg as her liaison to the Jewish community, another rather puzzling selection.

Goldenberg is a veteran Middle East hand under the Obama administration and undeniably qualified with strong pro-Israel credentials.

What is puzzling, however, is that he is very much on the Left of the Israeli political map, was a strong supporter of the Iranian nuclear deal, was opposed to moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and was an adviser on the 2020 presidential campaign of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, among the Democrats most critical of Israel in the Senate.

While all of the above are legitimate positions, the outreach Harris needs to make is not to American Jews on the Left side of the Israeli political fence – they are already in her camp. Rather, she needs to reach out to the more conservative, right-leaning Jewish Democrats concerned about her stance on Israel. Goldenberg’s appeal to those demographics is more limited.

Another questionable move recently taken – not by Harris this time, but by the Biden-Harris administration – was to consider, at least according to leaks, an arms embargo against Israel unless more humanitarian aid was let into northern Gaza.

The Manhattan Institute poll showed that 86% of American Jews consider themselves to be supporters of Israel, and it is safe to assume that the Jewish state having the wherewithal to defend itself is something sacred for many of these supporters.

The impact of whispering about an arms embargo while Israel is in a fight for its survival will not go over well with some of those Jewish voters who are on the fence, and who both Harris and Trump are courting. 

The Biden-Harris administration’s considering out loud an arms embargo so close to the election seems like shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to Jewish voters and indicates either taking the Jewish vote for granted, underestimating the importance of this issue to Jewish voters, or believing that more progressive and Arab American voters will be attracted by this proposal than Jews who will be pushed away because of it.

Some will argue that “cherry-picking” these examples of problematic steps taken by Harris regarding Israel is disingenuous amid the myriad times when she has supported Israel’s right to defend itself and come out strongly in support of the Jewish state. Why talk of the possibility of an arms embargo when the administration just deployed the THAAD missile defense system in Israel to repel another possible Iranian attack?

Supporting Israel’s right to defend itself and actively assisting it against Iran is widely seen as the default mode, something any president would do. Psychologists speak of what is called a “negativity bias,” which means people give more weight to the negative than the positive. For example, a person giving a speech could hear a dozen compliments afterward and one critical comment – but it is the critical comment that will stand out.

The same is true here. Dozens of positive acts and statements by Harris and the Biden-Harris administration will be drowned out in the minds of some by a few bad missteps. The problem for the Harris campaign is that there might be enough Jews in Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia for whom these missteps loom large and are very significant, potentially influencing their vote in this tightly contested election.