Tea Party voters

Consider. The Jewish vote in 2008 went for Obama 78 to 21—a 57-point margin. But the Democrats’ recent defeat in the heavily Jewish congressional district of Queens, lately represented by Rep. Anthony Weiner, revealed a serious hemorrhaging of support for Obama and his party.

One reason: Ed Koch accused Obama of “throwing Israel under the bus.”

Obama’s full-throated tribute to Israel at the United Nations, which threw the cause of Palestinian statehood and 60 years of Palestinian suffering under the bus, appears a harbinger of what to expect.

With the Jewish vote, critical to victory in Florida, up for grabs, the Palestinians will have few friends in either party. And if they seek a nation-state by going to the U.N. General Assembly, can anyone blame them?

The black vote went 95 to 4 for Obama in 2008. McCain’s share was the same as former Klansman David Duke got running for governor of Louisiana in 1991.

Today, however, black disillusionment with Obama is broad and deep. Unemployment in that community is nearly 17 percent. The head of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II of Missouri, said that if Bill Clinton were president, he and his colleagues would be marching on the White House.

What kind of “targeted messages” can Operation Vote make to fire up the African-American base against the GOP?

Look for the race card to be played early and often.

Already actor Morgan Freeman has slandered the Tea Party Republicans as representing a “dark underside of America” that is “going to do whatever (they) can to get this black man outta there.”

“It is a racist thing,” said Freeman.

Would this be the same Tea Party that helped elect two black Republicans to Congress from the Deep South in 2010?

At a Black Caucus event, Rep. Andre Carson of Indiana said that the Tea Party Republicans would “love to see you and me … hanging on a tree.” California Rep. Maxine Waters said the Tea Party “can go straight to hell.”

If, 13 months from Election Day, the debate has deteriorated to this level of invective, 2012 should be quite a year.

What happened to the Obama who gave that moving address in Tucson on civility in politics after “Gabby” Giffords was shot?

Seven years ago, in his keynote cited above, Obama denounced “the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes.”

Does not that sound like the evolving Obama campaign, as described in The Washington Post?