CLEVELAND – Martin Indyk is a distinguished two-time U.S. ambassador to Israel and the first Jewish American to serve in that post. Popular among proponents of both more assertive U.S. policies in the Middle East, and a strong U.S.-Israel alliance, Indyk should add a golden burnish to whichever presidential candidate he supports.

Yet this week, when Indyk came to Cleveland pitching Hillary Clinton, his reception was far from overwhelming among a Jewish demographic Clinton is counting on to help her in Ohio.

Speaking Monday night to about 200 people at Park Synagogue East, Indyk talked about Clinton’s long experience in the Middle East, dating back, he said, to when Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas.

But at the end of his hour, the applause, while warm for him, was only tepid for Hillary Clinton. Mixed in with fervent Clinton supporters were some who openly questioned whether she was tough enough on Iran.

Others expressed concern that Clinton’s policies promoting Middle East peace mediation while trying to isolate Iran through alliances sounded too much like George W. Bush’s failed coalition of the willing. Why not try Barack Obama’s idea of more Iran engagement, they seemed to suggest.

The U.S. Jewish vote is a tiny demographic – about 2 percent nationwide. Yet it’s a significant bellwether. Republicans tend to get sizable chunks of the Jewish vote only in times of overseas peril, or when foreign policy concerns dominate economic ones.

So the mixed reception for Indyk’s advocacy here in Cleveland illustrates the peril both for Clinton in Ohio on Tuesday and for the Democrats nationwide in November.

It bespeaks inroads Obama is making into the politically powerful Jewish vote nationwide – and also the opportunity Republican John McCain may have to swipe a big chunk of Jewish votes that normally go Democratic.

As expected, Clinton easily outpolled Obama among Jewish voters in the New York and New Jersey primaries – by about 2 to 1, according to the New Jersey Jewish News.

But Obama, surprisingly, surpassed her among Jewish voters in Connecticut, Massachusetts and California. The margin in Connecticut was 61 percent for Obama to 38 percent for Clinton, according to the New Jersey Jewish News.

This suggests that liberal Democrats more generally are swinging behind Obama’s candidacy, a pattern that could be replicated in the Cleveland area Tuesday.

Yet it also hints at a big opening for McCain, not just among Jewish voters, but among the many conservatives in the general electorate for whom Iran is the next big test case for American muscle.

Indyk’s most sobering comments in Cleveland were less about Clinton – for whose campaign he is the chief Middle East adviser – than about the dangerous Middle East landscape that awaits the next president. Those dangers include an Iran on track to get nuclear weapons, an Iraq from which it will be extremely difficult to disengage, a re-armed Hezbollah in politically unstable Lebanon and a Middle East peace process that is going nowhere fast, with a newly assertive Hamas toying with Iranian sponsorship of its own. They also include two stalwart U.S. allies, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, looking at possible succession crises after current leaders die, and the reality, for the foreseeable future, that Middle East oil supplies will determine whether the world economy rises or falls.

How this translates into votes on Nov. 4 remains the key question.

Depending on how Iran plays out in the campaign, an Obama-McCain matchup could open prospects for the Republicans to make inroads among not just Jewish votes but more conservative Democrats unseen since 1988, when the senior George Bush got an estimated 35 percent of the Jewish vote.

Yet it’s also a roll of the dice, since emphasizing McCain’s hawkish stance on Iraq and Iran – the hundred years’ war, as it were – gives Obama or Clinton the chance to dwell on pocketbook issues tied to the war.

The crucial policy questions leading up to November and beyond may become how radically to move beyond current stasis in the Middle East to try to change the tenor and approach of U.S. policies – including with Iran.

Yet as we’ve seen with the Clinton-Obama debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the candidates have been more than willing to remake themselves, whether or not the results correspond with their earlier positions. The last Democrat standing may be no exception.

Elizabeth Sullivan is foreign affairs columnist and an associate editor of the editorial pages for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. E-mail [email protected].