Neurotic Democrat

The numbers are in.

According to the exit polls, 78 percent of Jews voted for Barack Obama. Only 21 percent pulled the lever for McCain.

Given the negative campaign unleashed against Obama in the Jewish community — spearheaded by the Republican Jewish Coalition’s “guilt by association” smears — those numbers are astounding, and they give me great pride.

Consider how far the community has come. The July 1 Gallup poll had Jewish support for Obama at 61 percent; 34 percent backed McCain. On September 8, AJC had Obama at 57 percent, McCain at 30 percent.

These numbers were never terrible, except when you consider that in presidential elections between 1992 and 2004, the Democratic nominee for president averaged 79 percent support in the Jewish community.

The JTA, in a lead election story, trumpets ”Jews Looked Past Worries to Embrace Obama,” writing:

For some Jewish voters, the strangeness of Barack Obama was like a recurring dream: unsettling and then settling in, and then, suddenly, revelatory.

And it happened despite the concerted $2 million effort to undermine Obama. As the JTA notes:

The Republican Jewish Coalition ran ads coupling critiques on Obama’s dovish policies with guilt-by-association jabs at his former pastor who embraced Third World liberation theology, at associates at the University of Chicago and during his early political career who had radical pasts, at advisers who had once delivered sharp critiques of Israel and the pro-Israel community. The negative campaign glossed over Obama’s deep ties in the Chicago Jewish community and how he has picked a pre-eminently pro-Israel foreign policy team.

On a National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) conference call yesterday analyzing election results, pollster Mark Mellman said that Obama’s Jewish support was “greater than or equal to” past Democratic nominees, adding: ”The long-promised move of Jews out of the Democratic party has yet to materialize.”

Ira Forman, executive director of the NJDC, said Jewish voters — like voters generally — turned to Obama partly as a response to the economic meltdown. Further, he said, McCain’s pick of Palin tarnished his moderate image with Jewish voters, driving some would-be supporters away. Finally, he said, the Obama campaign’s outreach to Jewish voters — along with the efforts of groups like NJDC, the Jewish Council for Educational Research (which organized The Great Schlep), and JewsForObama.com — was “much more sophisticated and extensive than anything I’ve seen in years.”

Specific numbers for the states are not yet available, but the NJDC — noting that state trends tend to mirror the national numbers — released estimates of Jewish margins for Obama in several key states. Crunching those numbers a bit further shows just how critical Jews were to Obama’s success:

• Obama won Ohio by 204,000 votes; the Jewish margin for Obama accounted for about 53,000 of that total, or about 26 percent of his winning margin.
• Obama won Pennsylvania by 600,000 votes; the Jewish margin for Obama was 104,000, or about 17 percent.
• Obama won Virginia by 155,000 votes; the Jewish margin for Obama was 36,000, or about 23 percent.
• Obama won Nevada by 120,000 votes; the Jewish margin for Obama was 26,000, or about 22 percent.
• Obama won New York by 1,784,000 votes; the Jewish margin for Obama was 590,000, or about 33 percent.
• Obama won Florida by 195,000 votes; the Jewish margin for Obama was 238,000 – providing more than the difference in that state.

These numbers are important. President Obama will know that — despite months of smears castigating him as a Muslim terrorist-sympathizer who would be bad for Israel — the Jewish community stood with him, even above and beyond some other demographic groups, when it mattered most.

How fitting, then, that for his very first appointment — just hours after his election — Obama has tapped Rahm Emanuel to be White House chief of staff.

As Jeffrey Goldberg writes today on Jewcy.com:

Rahm did not, despite the rumors, serve in the Israeli Army, but he is deeply and emotionally committed to Israel and its safety.

Emanuel’s father, born in Jerusalem, was a member of the Irgun, the underground resistance movement in British Mandated-Palestine, and spoke Hebrew to his son growing up. Emanuel, whose first name means “high” or “lofty” in Hebrew, attended the Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Jewish Day School in Chicago; his kids attend the same day school, where his wife, a Jewish convert, volunteers. He and his family are members of Anshe Shalom, a modern Orthodox synagogue in Chicago.

“I am proud of my heritage and treasure the values it has taught me,” Emanuel told the JTA, when he was first elected to Congress in 2002.

Now — thanks in no small part to the passion, sweat, and muscle of the Jewish community — those values will be part of the everyday fabric of the Obama White House.