So I was looking for any update on the whole trip to Rome thing and came onto this article, which was interesting enough in its own way, but which also contained these statisitics:
No shock there.
Yet who does this group lean to? Despite the mesh with progressive beliefs, Jews overall are not flocking to one of their own, a landsman even.
In New York the Jewish vote is not so tiny, 8.9% for the state overall and no duh mostly Democrats.
This threadhas long since gone off the rails, but the underlying question is the same.
Sanders being Jewish is too little, too late. There are no Jewish issues, no policies that would benefit them that they aren’t already getting. Support for Israel is an odd singleton of an issue. The only policy division in actual national politics over the last half century is whether to give Israel lots of support or lots and lots of support.
A while back, when Mario Cuomo was going his famous Hamlet act, people would mention that he’d be the first President of Italian heritage. Nobody, even Italians, cared enough to urge him to act. They had won their victories pre-WWII. Politically, as with most other ways, they were completely assimilated.
You can’t say that about a huge variety of other loose groupings. They have much to gain by supporting candidates that will push their issues, and candidates of their own group are by far the most likely to actively work toward passing the necessary laws. Jews are no longer among those groups. Some people worry about the loss of identity entailed in that assimilation, but I think they forget what the past looked like.
I agree with Exapno Mapcase: It isn’t that Jews don’t care about Judaism and its place in American society, it’s that they can care about things other than that. The days when Jews were forced to fight to break the old gentleman’s agreements and face jew jokes being told in public are gone. Jews and Catholics are now in the same place in modern American culture: Somewhat out of the broadest mainstream but no longer facing any real legal or extra-legal disabilities due to their faith and culture.
The next big thing will be the first Hispanic President, who will come soon after the first Hispanic Presidential candidate who doesn’t have rabid views on immigration.
Soon after that, much sooner than some people alive now believe, we’ll have the first gay/lesbian/bisexual President. Or maybe even the first trans President.
Cultural shifts are slow to begin, but once they get going, they’re faster and more impossible to stop than you’d ever believe if you haven’t seen one first-hand.
Speaking of Cuomo I remember Ed Koch talking about how he thought one of the moments he was proudest to be a New Yorker was how when he first ran for Mayor of NYC against Cuomo that he wound up doing better amongst Italians than Cuomo while Cuomo did better among Jews.
Even for as progressive as Jews tend to be, I’d bet a lot of it is that Jews are not very thrilled about the far-left, given how anti-Israel sentiment and BDS is part and parcel of the far-left. While some of these types are merely criticizing a country’s government, much, if not most, are just anti-Semites (especially the “Queers for Palestine” set). Bernie is an avowedly far-left candidate with backers like Noam Chomsky (argued to be a self-hater), Cornel West, and he skipped AIPAC.
For Jews, Israel isn’t as much as a deal maker as it is a deal breaker. It’s breaking Sanders’ deal.
Also, they’re liberal, but not uber-progressive on economic issues. Enough of OWSers got into anti-Semitic conspiracy theory to scare mainstream Jews away, and Bernie is essentially the OWS candidate. Ulrike Meinhof said “Finance capital and the banks, the hard core of the system of imperialism and capitalism, had turned the hatred of men against money and exploitation, and against the Jews…Anti-Semitism is really a hatred of capitalism.”
I’m about as Jewish as Sanders, and about as “progressive” as he is too. I’m supporting Hillary because I can tolerate her and I think she’s in a better position to beat Trump/Cruz. There is nothing more important than that. When Mrs. Clinton wins, I will do what I can to move her to the left, but she must win.
I agree with DerekMichaels00 - Sanders is perceived as more anti-Israel than Clinton. (Not that a lot of pro-Israel people are thrilled with Clinton’s publically hugging Suha Arafat after she accused Israel of deliberately poisoning Arab children and the like, but she’s been around a while and her overall record is not bad, apparently.)
Also, Jewish voters are older than average, and older voters tend to support Clinton. The Jewish groups with the most younger voters are the Orthodox groups who are mostly Republican. You subtract out these groups and the remaining Jewish Democrats are even older yet.
The reason pro-Israel people don’t really care about that episode is that people believed in Oslo back 20 years ago, R and D. Bush Sr. forced Madrid on Israel, and Oslo was negoiated in late '92 (when Bush was outgoing-he left on 1/20/1993, not at any time in 1992), and Clinton went with the facts on the ground. Wives meeting was part of diplomacy, and its possible Hillary was trying to be polite, maybe the translator omitted what was said by Suha (similar to Al-Jazeera English being very different than Al Jazeera Arabic), something.
As Senator, Hillary made her pro-Israel bones. Back then, she was also much tougher on Islamic terrorism, and used the term too (of course tho, it made her into a “neocon” in 2008 and handed Obama the nomination.)
I am an anecdote of one. And my Jewish peer group may not be representative of larger numbers.
That said it is indeed consistent with what I have seen, and that has surprised me.
My personal experience, with Jews who most would describe as very progressive, is that it has zilch to do with Israel. Most are like me there and believe that Israel needs a friend who will set limits. They dislike Bibi intensely. Their Israel beliefs are mostly aligned with Sanders. Mostly they just like Clinton, think she can get things done, think Sanders would be ineffectual and a weaker candidate, and dislike what seems to them to be the simplistic analyses and solutions that Sanders espouses instead appreciating the more nuanced deeper understanding that they see Clinton possessing. But again, I am a bit surprised that there was not more selction bias involved in my personal experience, that it is apparently the predominant sense in my demographic.
I am pleased there is much much less ethnocentrism than I had thought there would be.
Why not? I’m not surprised at all by this news because among white Americans, socioeconomic status is an excellent predictor of support for Clinton or Sanders. And of course American Jews (the self-imposed poverty of the Haredim excepted) are disproportionately if not overwhelmingly upper middle-class suburbanites and professionals, something exacerbated by the dominance of the AIPAC-Likud Revisionist Zionist line on Israel among them.
In some very Democratic leaning NY Congressional districts, conservative Jewish groups make up a large portion of the Republican registration. Kashich, and especially Cruz, are focused on the Jewish groups in those districts since winning just a few hundred votes can net the three delegates from those districts.
I read last week and recall the number of primary votes (188) where either McCain in '08 or Romney in '12 (can’t recall which) won one district. So while Trump may win the state overwhelmingly, Cruz may pick off a disproportionate share of delegates by winning in those heavily Democratic districts.