Posted on 11/05/2008 12:22:51 PM PST by I still care
If the exit polls are accurate, it looks like the Republican Jewish realignment will have to wait for yet another election.
For months, Barack Obama struggled with Jewish undecideds, and McCain supporters predicted their candidate might win close to 40 percent of Jewish voters. Instead, polls show Obama winning about 78 percent of the Jewish vote against 22 percent for McCain.
To understand why, it’s worth consulting no less a political analyst than Rush Limbaugh.
The conservative talkster recently chatted with a McCain supporter from Michigan who identified herself as Jewish. She asked Rush why her Democratic coreligionists weren’t as concerned as she about Obama’s associations with Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers.
Limbaugh responded that the Jewish vote is emotional, not rational. “Liberals and Democrats are Democrats and liberals first. That’s the only explanation for this,” said Limbaugh, adding, “And no matter what you tell them factually, they’re going to reject it because their attachment to all their things politically are actually emotional.”
Normally I'd assume that more Jews vote Democratic because their values and the policies they support are more in line with the Left’s than the Right’s. As long as there are clear splits between the parties on major issues like abortion and tax policy, isn’t it rational to vote for the party you agree with?
And yet, a new survey by the Berman Jewish Policy Archive at NYU Wagner seems to bolster Limbaugh.
The survey, led by sociologist Steven M. Cohen, confirms that when it comes to health care, government largesse, and defense, to name three issues, “Jews’ political values incline them to support Obama.”
And yet (and here’s where Limbaugh is on to something) the survey also suggests that the Jewish affinity for the Democrats “cannot be well-explained by their differences in political values.”
In fact, “they are more liberal and more Democratic than their values would statistically predict.”
To put it another way, other cohorts with similar demographics and positions on the issues vote for Republicans in greater numbers.
So what’s with the Jews?
It’s all about “political identity,” according to Cohen and his team.
“People like to think of themselves as totally rational and driven by carefully considered values,” they write. “In fact, Jews in the upcoming election also respond to their identities. In their case, they will be reflecting their long-held, multi-generation attachment to the liberal camp in America, and to the Democratic Party.”
In other words, “my father was a Democrat, my grandfather was a Democrat….”
Or, as Limbaugh says, “emotional attachment and the Democrat Party or liberalism comes first.”
Of course, a Jewish Democrat might argue that such loyalty was earned in the course of party history. By this theory, Jews were attracted to the Democrats not just on specific issues, but thanks to Democratic attitudes that seemed more hospitable to the Jewish majority in the 20th century.
Such Jewish Democrats may well remember the “paleoconservatives” and their anti- Semitism. Or the isolationists who opposed FDR and America’s entry into World War II in the coded, and not-so-coded, language of Jew-baiting. While academics debate if FDR could have done more to halt the Shoa, bubbes and zaydas tell stories of how he surrounded himself with Jewish advisers when Jews were struggling for a toe-hold in corporate and academic life.
Fast forward to Pat Buchanan, an anti- Semite whose “cultural war” speech at the 1992 Republican convention prompted Molly Ivins to quip that it “sounded better in the original German.” Or the last few Republican presidential conventions, notable for their lack of black or brown faces. Most Jews may be white, but they still consider themselves a minority.
This obviously selective history suggests why many undecided Jews came back to Obama after getting to know Sarah Palin. According to a slew of interviews, her attacks on “elites”— educated, urban, active in academia and the media — did not go down well with Jewish voters who are disproportionately well-educated, clustered in the big cities, and over-represented in academia and the media. "Main Street." "Real America." For folks whose ancestors came through Ellis Island, Palin's rhetoric sounded like a like a political "no vacancy" sign.
As the New York Times’ conservative, and Jewish, columnist David Brooks lamented, the Republican Party “has lost the educated class by sins of commission — by telling members of that class to go away.”
Jewish Republicans deny the Palin factor or say that it pales next to what should be a Jewish priority: defending Israel and defeating Islamism. On these counts, they say, Republicans are the Jews’ best friends, while the Democrats, with a Jimmy Carterish wing that is hostile to Israel, are becoming increasingly bad news.
GOP optimists are also placing their chips on an actuarial solution: Indeed, an Oct. 23 analysis of Gallup polls, reported in the Forward, had Obama winning 74 percent of Jews aged 55 and over, compared to only 67 percent of those under 35.
But if Rush is right, Republicans have their work cut out for them. So long as Republicans send mixed cultural signals, and Democrats continue to pledge fealty to Israel, changing the Jewish vote will be like turning a battleship. There are powerful historical currents still pulling it in one direction.
Many Jews seem so suicidal that it’s not even funny.
Would Obama have lost a single Jewish vote if he had proposed an American version of the Wannsee conference?
What if he just promised to “give Israel to the Palestinians”?
The Jewish vote always seems to be for the most anti-Semitic candidate.
I wouldn’t have run down the Dunhams so much. A lot of this “red diaper” talk may have hit home with some older Jewish voters whose backgrounds and attitudes weren’t so different from the Dunhams back in the 1950s and 1960s.
You listed good reasons to STOP pandering for their votes... We’ll do the AMERICAN thing and support Israel but Conserv’s need to stop practically begging for their votes... It’s a waste of energy and resources... They’re gonna vote demonRAT anyway...
McCain was served up a dream opponent, and he whiffed.
The Republican party needs to change the rules across the board to make sure only Republicans registered for what....a year or more? Can vote in Repub primaries, or something to that effect to keep the moonbats from infiltrating.....that’s what gave us McCain. They crossed over to vote for the pub candidate they knew 0bama could beat.
here, here...
The demonRATS picked our candidate to run against... They would have won with Hitlery as well...
A Jewish child from a very early age is taught about how special they are in God’s view of the world’s peoples (orthodox or otherwise). This leads them to be over achievers and such. Not that there isn’t true talent there but extreme effort is the norm.
With the majority of American academia, media and entertainment being decidedly liberal it would be easy to see why so many American Jews associate themselves with the left.
Explanation for a 6 year old; they want to be cool, hip, in-the-know and they have been literally taught that liberalism and Democratic theology equals intelligence or progressiveness.
Until the Right gets more involved in the educational, entertainment and news institutions in this country we will never truly have the American Jewish vote
Being in the evangelical camp myself, I’m for a free Israel forever.
Just my 2 Lincolns,
jc
“...especially secular jews...”
question please;
what exactly is a cultural jew?
I didn’t use that phrase, you did.
In my opinion Rush underestimated the Obama campaign. I don’t thin he realized how much into the tank the MSM was for Obama. They were hints but it was really hard to imagine that all of them AP, Reuters, CNN, ABC etc would be on one page and would be so willing to flat out lie and not report anything negative. I also think he was relying on the Bradley effect and good ole’ fashion racism(not saying that Rush is racist just that he may have thought more people would not be willing to pull the lever for a black man). The only one that took Obama seriously from jump was Sean Hannity. That’s why Obama is obsessed with calling Sean out and keeping his name in his mouth. Sean defied him when he reported about Reverend Wright from the beginning of his campaign and he had to drop the Rev. from his announcement ceremony. Obama only called out Limbaugh once in the Spanish Language ad. If more Pumas had come out then OC would have been more sucessful.
“Somebody explain this to me like I’m a six year old.
What would be a ‘educated, Jewish’ person’s objection to Sarah Palin?”
I will try but I doubt I will succeed. My elderly Jewish parents were well-described by this article. They seriously distrusted 0bama. They could not bring themselves to vote McCain, however. They could not supply a reason. They kept referring to “evil characters he was associated with”, and I asked them, multiple times, “who were they?”, “Can you name them?”, “What did they do?”, “how did whatever they did affect you or anyone else?”, “When did he do these despicable things?” and I am telling you, there was not one single thing, not a date, not even reference to a decade, not a name, not a hint of anything they could refer to. Nothing. I asked “Keating 5?” and they said no, not that.(!) But the illogic in their positions never undermined their conviction that they could not vote for him. When I suggested they vote for nobody for Pres but vote the downticket, that was simply impossible. “That would be wrong”.
And then, Palin. They went absolutely flaming bats**t over her, and that threw them right over the edge. Again, I asked for any kind of reason based on any kind of logic and all I got was blank stares. Sarahs’ various statements about how there would be increased understanding of disabled/Down’s children because she (Sarah) had one absolutely threw my Mom back in her chair. Just blew her away. I asked her what is different about the parallel idea that there would be a greater affinity for Black folks with a Black man in office, and she said the two “had nothing to do with each other”. Huh?
So, I report, you decide. It’s funny you asked to be explained all this like you were a 6-year old and I am telling you, that the reasoning is on the level of a 4 year old. Great swaths of Jews will not vote anything other than “D”, wouldn’t matter if the Dem in question shotgunned two Jews in cold blood in the Rose Garden on CNN live.
The whole Bible teaches that the Jews are a uniquely ungrateful tribe feckless of their own clear, real interests, and that God loves them anyway.
Huh? IIRC, OC was getting non-dems to vote in the primaries FOR Hillary, not against her.
Mark
Actually, I disagree with this... McCain did unbelievably well, when you consider:
a) He wasn't the "natural" candidate of the party, and had pretty much alienated the base before the campaign even took off.
b) He decided to play by the rules, and use federal campaign contributions, limiting what he could raise on his own.
c) Blatant registration and I believe, voter fraud by the dems, through FEDERALLY FUNDED organizations like ACORN.
And finally,
d) Obama got what must have been the dollar equivalent of BILLIONS of dollars of propaganda from a fawning press that hid any bad things, while at the same time picking up every rumor against McCain or Palin.
Given all that, I'm surprised McCain did anywhere near as well as he did, getting nearly 50% of the popular vote.
Mark
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