Jewish politicians have had a real string of bad luck. You have the candidates who lost reelection, Coleman, Feingold and Eric Cantor. You have the candidates taken down by scandal, Weiner and Spitzer. And, you have a freak accidents in the case of Wellstone and an attempted assassination in the case of Giffords. If you're only 2% of the population, you can't clear your bench of elected officials like that.
And of course, there's Lieberman, who was the VP nominee of a man who could have had the nomination with a word, but had the misfortune of running just as the party tilted away from his style of Democrat. From winner of the popular vote for VP, to barely even a blip on the primary radar, to primaried out of the party within six years. Crazy.
There's still a really strong group of Jewish politicians in office, but they tend to be older policy wonk types. Like, Chuck Schumer is one of the savviest and most accomplished politicians in the country right now, but he's not running any time soon.