Well, I’ll confess.
I voted Republican. It had nothing to do with Leiberman; I just wasn’t going to vote for Gore.
Zev Steinhardt
I am a Jew who believes that anti-Semitism in America is dead. I spent the first eighteen years of my life in Kentucky and North Carolina, two states which are supposedly in the breeding ground of bias and hatred. I never encountered a single person who acted and behaved in a hostile manner because of my religion. Anyway, I find it difficult to believe that anybody would vote Bush just because of Lieberman’s religion when issues such as abortion, taxes, and social security were on the line.
Furthermore, there might even be some Christians (Catholics especially), who would view a Jewish VP candidate better than another Evangelical Protestant. (Just an idea, I have no proof to back it up.)
I am not so sanguine. In my neck of the woods (southwest Missouri), it seems anti-Semitism is enjoying a bit of a resurgence. In the past two years I have heard acquaintances frequently using “you Jew” as an insult and “Jewish” as a synonym for “lame” (much as “gay” has become). I had never heard this kind of language before. The frightening thing is that I have heard it principally from 18-to-21 year olds, in direct refutation of the common belief that we are only waiting for old bigots to die off.
Still, I saw no national trend against Lieberman. And the acquaintances whose politics I knew wouldn’t have voted for Gore if his running mate had been Jesus Christ Himself, so even if there is a resurgence of anti-Semitism in my area, I don’t think it lost Gore any votes that he hadn’t lost already.
Back in college, I wrote an analysis of the Al Smith campaign (the first Catholic to run for Pres. on a major-party ticket). What I can apply from that paper to this current situation is that polling about the issue of anti-religious bias is useless. The differences between polling done then (admittedly, not as advanced then as now) and the actual voting patterns was well outside the margin of error. A large percentage of people flat-out lied to pollsters about their anti-Catholicism.
I think that Lieberman’s affect on the outcome of the election will not be determined until there is serious academic study of it (I would be very suprised if those studies have not already started). My first guess is that Lieberman suppressed votes for Gore. I can make no guess whatsoever on whether it was enough to affect the outcome.
Sua
Barry was only a semi-Semite.
Danimal
Where are you getting this common belief that we are only waiting for the old bigts to die off?
The only prominent leaders to publicly object to a Jewish VP were a handful of Blacks, who happened to be Democrats. However, Gore-Lieberman did extremely well with Black voters, so Lieberman’s religion seems not to have been a factor here.
As a Jew, I wonder whether we’ve reached the time when a Jew could be elected President. Frankly I’m pessimistic. Note that since John Kennedy allegedly broke the barrier for Roman Catholics, we haven’t had elected another Catholic President or Vice President. In fact, I’m having trouble even coming up with Roman Catholic losing candidates for Pres. or VP since 1960.
Note 1: Barry Goldwater’s father was Jewish.
Note 2: If a candidate loses by one vote, then that candidate lost the election on potentially as many issues as all the people who did not vote for that candidate.
Note 3: Anti-Semitism is a broad word, because it can also include Arabs. If so, then Jews are possibly more anti-Semitic than non-Jews on average.
Personally, I think a Zionist will always hurt a ticket, no matter how nice the guy is, because Americans may seem to fully buy into this middle-east enforcement of the Bible, but only overtly. Privately, they fear meddling in economics, because to most people religion is just a moral cover to do better business afterall.
I also think Lieberman made a big mistake by equating morality with a belief in God (according to a secular humanist magazine editor, Paul Kurtz, recently posted here in GD). So, he would be anti-intellectual and maybe anti-atheist, which is intellectually worse than opposing another religion, because it is opposing a system that offers neutrality.
I hope everyone realizes that Lieberman is a man of many contradictions as a key representative of major insurance and gun companies in Connecticut and one who opposes Hollywood and favors censorship. I would hope that the first Jewish person to hold such high office would not be an anti-intellectual zealot, for ethical reasons, same goes for any religious zealot, such as Buchanan or Hatch (a fellow Utahn). As for prejudice: They would probably never hire me, but I would easily hire them–the neutrality ethic prevents prejudgment of one religion over another.
Note 4: Anyone who thinks they should be pro-Israel to be non anti-Semitic is sadly mistaken and maybe insane.
Note 5: I think religion in American politics is more treasonous than stupid.
Some comments
pldennison is correct in asuming that most Orthodox Jews tend to vote Republican. Most Jews are not Orthodox, and Democrats tend to pick up about 70% of the Jewish vote overall (IIRC).
It was widely reported during the campaign that the Lieberman candidacy had engendered widespread “excitement” among many Jews. How that translates into votes is unclear - it may just represent excitement among Jewish Democrats. Lieberman’s candidacy was thought to be one of the major reasons for Al Gore doing so well in pre-election polls in Florida, and he (L) campaigned there extensively (during the vote-counting fights he was said to “take it personally” for this reason.) However, in one of the election surprises, Gore actually lost the senior vote in Florida (making up for it with a surprisingly high Black turnout). The Jewish population in Florida is disproportionately retiree. Also, Democratic predictions that Gore would do well in the overseas absentee ballot count due to enthusiastic Jewish voters in Israel completely failed to materialize. So it may be that there was not as much impact as had been thought.
I think it is considered something of a truism in politics that the VP candidate has little ultimate impact on the election, and that the primary goal is to have him carry his own state (both Lieberman and Cheney were irrelevant in the latter regard). There has probably not been in recent history a greater disparity in the public perception of opposing VP candidates than that which was between Lloyd Bentsen and Dan Quayle, and Bush still won relatively easily.
I suspect that the post-Lieberman bounce (to the extent that it can be attributed to Lieberman and not the convention) was not so much due to the fact that people were more likely to vote for a ticket which contained Lieberman, as it was to the positive reflection that it cast on Gore himself. He had done something which was portrayed as a bold move. This was helpful to a person trying to step out of the shadow of Clinton and break the image of himself as a long term Washington machine politician/insider. But such advantages tend to fade over time.
Personally, I doubt if anti-semitism hurt the Gore campaign. Which is not to say that there was not a single anti-semite out there who decided to vote against Gore for this reason, but I doubt if it was a major factor.
I grew up in a medium-small southern city (Valdosta GA, 1960s). I think for the most part the kids I grew up with did not encounter Jewish folks and tended to think of them in the same terms as we thought of Indians: we knew “all about them” from the media (= the Bible in the case of the Jews; western films in the case of the Indians) but didn’t think of them in terms of their having a present-tense existence.
In other words, there may be less anti-Semitic feeling in the south than some of you may think, if partially because many non-cosmopolitan southerners are oblivious to modern Jews, don’t (knowingly) meet them in their daily lives, and therefore have no attitude towards them at all to speak of.
Is Lieberman Jewish? He doesn’t look Jewish.
I know for a fact it hurt them by one vote…my mother’s. I posted a rant to this very thing in the Pit the day after I got her call. “Can you believe that Gore has nominated that Jew!” My poor mother, don’t hate her for being a bigot, which she is, she’s also narrow-minded and a little bit ditsy. She heard Rush Limbaugh talking about how the Jews controlled the banking and entertainment industries, etc. etc. I told her she’d be sorry later for letting that be the final straw that swayed her decision. Now she calls me all the time and says “What is Bush doing with this? What does this mean?” Oh well, it’s only one vote.
Needs2know
I don’t believe this is true.
I do – whenever I need unmitigated stupidity, Rush Limbaugh is the first place I turn to. And given all the other boneheaded things Rush has said in the past, dragging out anti-Semitic stereotypes is par for the course.
It almost doesn’t matter whether or not Limbaugh actually said it. The more important point is that some number of people believe it anyway - I know of a few myself, and N2K’s mom is another. But I really don’t think they are numerous enough to have swung the election.
As to whether Limbaugh is thought to be the type of person who would say that, or if he says enough similar things to attract the kind of people who think that to his show, that’s between him, them, and their consciences.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by ElvisL1ves *
**
I’m a Jewish Rush Limbaugh fan. One of the things I appreciate about him is that he’s particularly pro-Jewish. He mentions Jews who exemplify the optimism and working for success that he recommends. He’s also a big supporter of Israel – more so than the Clinton or the Bush administration and much more so than the NY Times.
Those who are eager to believe the worst about RL, regardless of the facts, ought to look in mirror when talking about hate-mongers and stereotypes.
It’s hard to discount latent anti-Semitism in states such as West Virginia, Missouri, Tennessee and Arkansas when there are still anti-Semites in the Senate. Strom Thurmond blocked the nomination of Abe Fortas as Chief Justice because he was Jewish, Trent Lott is an honorary member of the CCC (Conservative Citizens Council), which is a genteel anti-Semitic organization, and Bob Byrd used to be in the KKK. Saying anti-Semitism is dead would be a big mistake, and could’ve cost Gore those four states.
We’ve been waiting for the old bigots to die off for four thousand years. sigh
looking back now I will say yes
Well, it’s nice that you’ve given the question some thought. But we generally accept a little more spontaneity in responses.