Why Florida Is Still Up for Grabs for Obama or Romney

The Daily Beast ^ | Sep 14, 2012 | David Freedlander

[jjotto]

For insight into the everlasting shame of Holocaust-era American (non-religious) Jewish leadership and the rank-and-file that supported them, see

http://www.shemayisrael.co.il/publicat/hazon/tzedaka/marched.htm

[Roos_Girl]

The details are interesting and I appreciate the additional information that y’all provided that I didn’t previously know. However, I believe this is a case similar to why blacks tend to vote Democrat; a D was president when the Civil Rights Act was passed and a D was president when we went to war with Germany. The details are irrelevant... to them.

[justiceseeker93]

However, I believe this is a case similar to why blacks tend to vote Democrat; a D was president when the Civil Rights Act was passed and a D was president when we went to war with Germany. The details are irrelevant... to them.

From this Jewish perspective, I would say that WWII has to be a less than adequate explanation of the attraction of Franklin D. Roosevelt to Jewish voters. You have to realize that Roosevelt had already been elected President three times by the time the US declared war on Germany days after Pearl Harbor. Plus, some might well argue that he and his administration entered the war belatedly only because their hand was forced by events beyond their control.

No, the main reason for the Jewish community's affinity for Roosevelt stems from his domestic policy. The American Jewish community in the 1930s was much different demographically than it is today. Following the massive wave of Jewish immigration to the US from about 1880 to 1914, they were nowhere near as well-educated as a group and tended to be much more toward the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder, consisting largely of immigrants and younger first generation Americans. Being poor at the time made them more susceptible to the class warfare propaganda of the New Deal. But just as importantly, most of their family experiences in the old country centered around serious problems with the Russian czars, whereas the opposition to the czars in that world, their only hope for a better future, was essentially in various movements of the left. Hence the affinity for populist movements of the left in the United States, specifically Roosevelt's New Deal.

Jews weren't the only relatively new white ethnic group who supported Roosevelt and the 'rats in large numbers during that era. But their predilection for the 'Rats seems to have lasted considerably longer with time than has that of the others. There is a good deal of historical pro-Roosevelt, pro-Democrat mythology that has unfortunately been passed down through the generations in too many Jewish families, which still warps the views of many even in today's markedly different political climate.

Black voting patterns are a different story. Needless to say, their predilection for the 'rats is numerically much, much stronger than that of the Jews or other ethnic groups - especially with Obama at the top of the ticket.