Although the presidential election is still several days away, it is safe to say that Democratic candidate Barack Obama has secured the lion’s share of American Jewish votes.
While some Republicans had spoken optimistically of Sen. John McCain matching, or even exceeding, the nearly 40 percent of Jewish votes that Ronald Reagan received in 1980, it was wishful thinking to expect Jews to forgo their longstanding commitment to the Democratic Party.
Conservatives may dismiss the persistent affection of the majority of Jews for the Democrats as being rooted as much in nostalgia for Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman as in the merits of their successors. But Republicans know too well that Jews are second only to African-Americans in their dogged refusal to vote for anyone but a Democrat.
Chief among the reasons why Republicans have failed to create a political realignment was that their wedge issue – support for Israel – is not the only item on the list of Jewish concerns.
Domestic issues, particularly those related to the separation of church and state, and social issues, such as support for abortion rights, are seen as matters of profound personal concern. On a deeper level, most Jews have traditionally interpreted Judaism’s imperative for social justice as a mandate for liberal politics. Conservatives may jibe, not without justice, that the faith of liberal Jews can be defined as the Democratic Party platform with holidays thrown in, but there’s no denying the power of these ideas.
That said, Republicans were poised to make some gains. McCain’s strong stands on Israel and Islamist terror gave the GOP reason for hope. Also helpful was the victory of Obama, a virtual political unknown, over Sen. Hillary Clinton, who had strong support among Jews. And Obama’s long association with a radical anti-Semite like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright troubled many voters.
By late September, however, GOP optimism fell victim to the panic on Wall Street. But more important in sounding the death knell, at least among Jews, was the Sarah Palin factor.
Though Palin’s presence on the ticket has energized the Republican base, her identity as a social conservative and evangelical Christian had the opposite effect on most Jews, because their views on domestic matters run contrary to hers. The hostility she has generated among liberal Jews, especially women, is visceral and nasty. There’s little doubt she is going to cost McCain some Jewish votes.
So, no matter who is sworn in next January, the Democratic dominance of the Jewish vote will almost certainly remain unshaken. Unfortunately, that has already led a few pundits to jump to some unjustified conclusions.
In an essay titled “Obama’s Jews” in the October issue of Harper’s, Bernard Avishai, an Israeli who is a strong critic of the way American Jews fervently support his country, states his belief that the unwillingness of Jews to vote Republican, despite the GOP’s supposed superior record on Israel, means they are indifferent to such appeals. He blithely assumes this Democratic majority is sticking with its party’s candidate precisely because it has rejected the mantra of down-the-line support for Israel.
Ironically, his view seems to echo the laments of Jewish Republicans, who fear the vote for Obama means Jews no longer care about Israel. That is a particularly bitter reflection for them, because conservatives have long held that, sooner or later, American Jews would switch parties because they were bound to eventually conclude that the Democrats were inherently unreliable on Israel.
It is no secret that there is a large element of the American Left that is inherently hostile to Israel and Zionism. They wield proportionally more influence among Democrats than that portion of the American Right that is similarly hostile to Israel (think Pat Buchanan). To the extent that any Democrat can be identified as a clone of former president Jimmy Carter, whose view of Israel as an apartheid state has thoroughly discredited him as a mainstream figure, the Republicans do gain.
Yet as the results of 1980 proved, when Jewish voters are presented with a Democrat perceived as hostile to Israel, they will vote for his or her opponent. In that election, Carter (whose animus toward Israel wasn’t nearly as pronounced as it has since become) received a record low Jewish vote.