Jewish, Palestinian Vote at Risk over DNC Platform

In the wake of the Democratic National Convention, the Obama Administration must deal with anger from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As Obama delivered a convention speech intended to shore up the votes of those in attendance, Jewish voters throughout fumed that Jerusalem had been omitted from the DNC platform, and Palestinian voters fumed when Jerusalem was added back to the platform on Wednesday.

As the President tried to deliver a message of unity, he was speaking to a house that was already divided.

Jewish outrage stems from the feeling that Democrats actively snubbed them. The 2008 DNC platform did recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, so the 2012 platform’s drafters either made the change deliberately or found the issue so unimportant as to overlook it.

As for the Palestinian voters, the Obama administration has gone out of its way to raise the profile of the Palestinian plight, even to the point of sacrificing good relations with Israel to do it. And this has now come back to bite Obama. 

After spending the past few years wooing Palestinian voters in America to his side via his pro-Palestinian foreign policy, Obama then turned and asked the DNC to reinsert recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in the platform.

Worse yet for Obama,  many of these Palestinian voters are in Michigan, a state he desperately needs to win reelection in November.