What to Watch
October
12, 2020
Election Day 2020 is just 22 days away, and here is your update
on the stories and trends to watch this week. Let us have your
feedback at [email protected].
Top News from the Week:
Amy Coney Barrett
The Judiciary Committee hearing on Amy Coney
Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court began this morning.
She is an outstanding nominee:
- The American Bar Association rated her “well qualified,” its
highest rating;
- She graduated top of her class from Notre Dame Law School;
- She clerked for the late Justice Antonin
Scalia;
- She has extensive experience across private practice, academia,
and public service;
- She served 3 years on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals;
- She has earned widespread bipartisan respect, for eg., every
full-time member of Notre Dame Law School faculty wrote in support of
her confirmation to the Circuit Court in 2017;
- As a mother of seven, Judge Barrett would be the first mother of
school-aged children ever to sit on the US Supreme Court.
Judge Barrett’s opening statement at the hearing demonstrates that
she is a principled person who is dedicated to the law. She
said:
Courts have a vital responsibility to enforce the rule of law,
which is critical to a free society. But courts are not designed to
solve every problem or right every wrong in our public life. The
policy decisions and value judgments of government must be made by the
political branches elected by and accountable to the People. The
public should not expect courts to do so, and courts should not
try.
Democrats on the Judiciary Committee will try to cast aspersions on
Judge Barrett’s religious faith. Rabbi Meir
Soloveichik, in a New York Times op-ed this weekend,
writes that Amy Coney Barrett’s religious beliefs and practice should
be irrelevant to her fitness to serve on the Supreme Court. He writes
that some of the articles written about her, “insinuate that her
religion marks her as out of the mainstream, or unable to serve fairly
as a Supreme Court justice.” He continues:
Traditional Jews in America who read these broadsides against Judge
Barrett can easily imagine similar ones about themselves. We might
wonder what the reaction would now be were a member of our own
religious community appointed to a position of prominence. After all,
the Jewish liturgy’s expressed aspiration, in an existence filled with
injustice, is “to fix the world through the kingship of God.” We
believe ourselves bound by a covenant to other Jews, and many of our
observances mark us as different... Like Muslims, Sikhs, and other
minority faith communities, we dream of our daughters and sons
experiencing American equality without suffering for their beliefs. We
continue to… work for an America where what Justice Kagan said about
her grandparents will be true about our grandchildren: that their
Jewishness, “strange as it may seem to some, would prove no barrier to
their accomplishments.”
RJC in the News
When President Donald Trump tested positive for
coronavirus, it was just one more crazy thing making 2020 a most
unusual election year. RJC Executive Director Matt
Brooks addressed this uncertainty in
an interview with the Jerusalem Post:
Matt Brooks, the executive director for the Republican Jewish
Coalition, told the Post that “no one could tell with certainty that
they know how the events of the last week may impact this election.
The one thing that is certain about this election and trajectory is
the uncertainty.”
Brooks noted that polls in some key states remain closer than the
national numbers, and that the race is competitive. “You have to take
all these outlier polls, the very favorable and the very negative
polls with a grain of salt,” he said.
He also said he feels similar to 2016, when Trump won the election
despite a majority of polls that indicated Democratic nominee Hillary
Clinton was leading the race. “I think there’s a lot of volatility
left in the coming weeks,” Brooks continued. “This has been a chaotic
election and a bit of a roller coaster. And we just don’t know for
sure how it’s going to come out. It’s hard to predict with certainty
the outcome of any event in this environment. So, to the extent that
people are making declarations that the diagnosis had this effect or
that effect, nobody really knows. My sense is – fasten your seat
belts, because it’s going to be a wild ride to the finish line.”
Asked about the high numbers of infections within the White House,
including diagnoses of the first lady and many senior advisers, Brooks
said “it’s unfortunate, and we hate to see it, and we hope everybody
has a speedy and complete recovery, but it’s no different than what we
see when there’s an outbreak on a football team or a baseball team or
in any kind of situation where people are working closely together and
this virus rears its ugly head.”
The RJC is working hard in several key battleground states,
reaching out to persuadable Jewish voters and encouraging Republican
voters to cast their ballots. Florida is a particularly important
state this year, as the Jewish News Service reports:
For the Republican Jewish Coalition, which seeks
to re-elect Trump and Republicans down-ballot, this means reaching out
to Jewish voters in “Florida, Florida, Florida,” the organization’s
executive director, Matt Brooks, told JNS.
The Sunshine State is home to an estimated 650,000 Jewish
residents.
…While RJC’s “significant focus” is on the presidential race, the
organization has also been “involved in independent expenditures to
help several [U.S. House of Representatives] and [U.S.] Senate
candidates who we’re supporting, and we’re about to announce another
independent expenditure for a different race that we’re going to jump
into,” said Brooks.
The RJC has endorsed 70 candidates, including Trump.
…Although Biden is expected to win the Jewish vote, Jewish
Republicans, including the RJC, expect Trump to receive an increase in
the Jewish vote and even win the largest percentage of the Jewish vote
for any GOP presidential candidate to date.
At the same time, RJC PAC is also having record-breaking
fundraising.
RJC’s political action committee, RJC PAC, has spent almost $1.48
million between January 2019 and August 2020, according to the Federal
Election Commission (FEC). It’s been a “historic” and “record-setting”
fundraising year for the RJC, affirmed Brooks.
In case you were wondering when the “craziness” of this election
season will be over, Salena Zito at the
Washington Examiner has
some bad news: it won’t end soon, because the underlying issues
that led to President Trump’s election in 2016 have not been resolved.
Share this article with friends who think that if only Trump stops
being President, the disruption, chaos, and social unrest will
end.
Recommended Reading
Be Part of the RJC
Action!
RJC volunteers made 18,995 Jewish voter contacts
last week! We are reaching out to potential Jewish voters in Michigan,
Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona, and Georgia, key
battleground states of the 2020 election cycle.
Congratulations to Philip Richmond from
Sarasota, FL, who won a 2020 Volunteer Raffle Prize.
Great work, Philip!
Reminder: For every 1,000 calls made to targeted Jewish voters
in key battleground states, volunteers will receive 1 raffle “ticket”
to enter the prize drawing, and will receive a $100 AmEx gift
card.
Join us this week on Tuesday, October 13,
and Thursday, October 15, to continue our Jewish voter contact
calls. Every call makes a difference!
CLICK
HERE TO SIGN UP AND HELP.
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