World

NEWS ANALYSIS

Victorious Democrats
Will Decide Their Own Fate

Jonathan S. Tobin
Jewish Exponent

Philadelphia

W

ith Barack Obama's historic
win, the question of who won
the Jewish vote has under-
standably been swept to the side.With the
Democrat sweeping to victory across the
country, the political donnybrook that has
been fought within the Jewish community
is nothing more than a sideshow.
Nevertheless, the fact that Obama
won, according to exit polls, 77 percent
of Jewish votes, is no small achievement.
The Obama tidal wave swamped the
efforts of supporters of Sen. John McCain
to increase the number of Jews who vote
Republican and an aggressive ad cam-
paign by the Republican Jewish Coalition
that drove Democrats up the wall.
While some in the GOP had spoken
optimistically of McCain matching, or
even exceeding, the nearly 40 percent of
Jewish votes that Ronald Reagan received
in 1980, it was wishful thinking that Jews
would forego their longstanding commit-
ment to the Democratic Party.
Conservatives may dismiss the persis-
tent 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. And, in what
must be considered one of the most par-
tisan moments in American history, their
expectation that a sizable number would
bolt across the aisle was unrealistic.

Myths About Jewish Voters
Chief among the reasons why the
Republicans have failed to create a politi-
cal realignment was that their wedge
issue — support for the State of 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 inter-
preted Judaism's imperative for social

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November 13 2008

justice as a mandate for liberal politics.
Conservatives may jibe, not without jus-
tice, that the faith of liberal Jews may 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 to
the GOP was the victory of Sen. Barack
Obama, a virtual political unknown, over
Sen. Hillary Clinton who had strong sup-
port among Jews. Obama's long associa-
tion with a radical anti-Semite like the
Rev. Jeremiah Wright rightly troubled
many voters.
However, by late September, GOP opti-
mism fell victim to the panic on Wall
Street. But more important at sounding
the death knell, at least among the Jews,
was the Sarah Palin factor.
Though Palin's presence on the ticket
energized the Republican base, her
identity as a social conservative and
Evangelical Christian has had the oppo-
site effect on most Jews because their
views on domestic matters run contrary
to hers. The hostility that she has gen-
erated among liberal Jews, especially
women, was visceral. There's little doubt
she cost McCain some Jewish votes.

GOP Fallout
The result of these factors is that the
Democratic dominance of the Jewish
vote was strengthened. Unfortunately,
that led a few pundits to jump to some
unjustified conclusions even before the
votes were counted.
In the October issue of Harper's
Magazine, writer Bernard Avishai, an
Israeli who is a strong critic of the way
American Jews fervently support his
country, stated his belief in an essay
titled "Obama's Jews," that the unwilling-
ness of Jews to vote Republican, despite
their supposed superior record on Israel,
means that they are indifferent to such
appeals. He blithely assumed that this
Democratic majority stuck 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
that the vote for Obama means that Jews

no longer care about Israel. That is a par-
ticularly bitter reflection for them because
conservatives have long held that, sooner or
later, American Jews would switch parties
because they were bound to eventually con-
clude that the Democrats were inherently
unreliable on Israel.
It is no secret that there is a large ele-
ment of the American left that is inher-
ently 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 main-
stream figure, the Republicans do gain.
Yet, as the results of 1980 proved,
when Jewish voters are presented with
a Democrat who is perceived as hostile
to Israel, they will vote for his or her
opponent. In that election, Carter (whose
animus for Israel wasn't nearly as pro-
nounced as it has since become) received
a record-low Jewish vote.
But, contrary to the conclusion of
Avishai and the pessimistic Republicans,
if Democrats have held their own among
the Jews since then, it was not because
they have chosen to flout the sensibilities
of supporters of Israel, but because they
never allowed themselves to be wrong-
footed on Israel as they were in 1980.

They Do Care
In line with this insight, throughout this
year's campaign Obama wisely never
allowed much daylight between his
positions and that of the pro-Israel com-
munity. His goal was not to prove that he
had a better record than McCain, but to
show an inherently sympathetic audience
of Jewish Democrats that his pro-Israel
stance was plausible enough to allow
them to vote for him, and against his
opponent, on the basis of other issues.
In response, the RJC ad campaign
focused on branding Obama as a radical
who is hostile to Israel. But the fact that
it failed to move voters was not be due to
the fact that Jews think Obama is weak on
Israel and don't care. Rather it was because
the majority of Jews who are Democrats
believed the assertion to be false.
Growing assimilation is altering the

demographics of the Jewish community,
and most American Jews are still more
afraid of Pat Robertson than they are of
Hamas, Hezbollah or even Iran. But it
would be dead wrong to think that most
don't care about Israel.
Republicans may question Obama's
sincerity and point to his personal his-
tory and waffling on issues, such as
Jerusalem, to back up their cynicism.
But his consistent statements of support
for Israel effectively parried the claim
that he is another Carter, which is all
he really needed to do to hold on to the
Jewish vote. My guess is that his inher-
ent pragmatism and keen political skills
will mean that he will probably be able to
keep it four years from now
The proof, of course, will be in the
pudding. Should a President Obama
prove his critics right and go back on
his word on Israel, he will discover
that Jewish voters, including many
Democrats, are every bit as capable
of punishing him as they were Jimmy
Carter 28 years ago. 0

Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of the

Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia. He can be
contacted via e-mail at:

jtobin@jewishexponent.com.

Answering
Israel's Critics

The Charge
A United Nations envoy last week criti-
cized Israel for demolishing Palestinian
homes on the West Bank, calling those
evicted vulnerable and rendered des-
titute, and the practice a setback to
peacemaking by reversing efforts to
improve Palestinian conditions.

The Answer
As does any sovereign state, Israel acts
to take down structures built illegally
on public land. Israel also strikes back
against terrorists and their property if it
is used to plan or implement terrorism.

— Allan Gale

Jewish Community Relations Council

of Metropolitan Detroit

@ Jewish Renaissance Media, Nov. 13, 2008