At a Reform synagogue in Denver, the senior rabbi says he is “troubled and surprised” by members who say they are reluctant to vote for Sen. Barack Obama because he is black.
Obama surrogates working the retirement condo circuit in Florida see the same thing among Jews who look at Obama and see Rev. Jesse Jackson or Rev. Louis Farrakhan.
And in California, a newly formed group that started out with the idea of using grandchildren to reassure their grandparents that Obama would be a safe choice for Israel has shifted gears due to the growing perception that race is cutting into Obama’s Jewish vote — a trend political experts and campaign workers alike say is closely correlated to age.
“We started off mostly as
an Israel platform,” said Jessica Emerson-Fleming, a founder of Jewish Grandchildren for Obama. “The race issue worked itself in much more than I expected it would. We started hearing from a lot of people [telling us] that we had to talk much more about race than we did because it’s such a strong underlying factor in the election.”
Emerson-Fleming said her group’s Web site is offering more resources for young people who want to address the race factor with their grandparents — although they are approaching the issue with caution.
“It’s very tricky,” she said. “You can’t have grandchildren calling their grandparents racist.
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c37_a13448/News/National.html
Topic: Obamirites sending granchildren to tell Grandparents obama is great (Read 647 times)