As Usual, Jews Vote Democrat

In the 2008 election, an overwhelming 83% of Jews voted for Obama. Since then, the Obama administration has not been sufficiently pro-Israel to satisfy the the pro-ethnic cleansing/apartheid crowd at AIPAC and the Weekly Standard. The empire struck back, organizing “The Emergency Committee for Israel” to try to panic Jewish voters into voting for Republicans.

It didn’t work. As Eric Alterman notes, Jews split 66 to 31 in favor of Democrats. This is down from the 83% for for Obama, but more in line with traditional patterns. Alterman points to a gap between the leadership and rank and file Jews. To some extent this is true, but explicitly Jewish organizations like the ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Center and de facto Jewish organizations like the $PLC remain bastions of a multicultural America, closely associated with the political left. And, as Norman Podhoretz points out, citing an academic study, Jews “back Republicans only so long as they adopted the liberal position on ‘such bellwether issues … as immigration, abortion, gay rights and the separation of church and state.'”

Diaspora Jews in the West react primarily as a Diaspora group, and that means identifying with the multicultural, pro-immigration, anti-White left. The Jewish identification with the left is a strategy designed to increase Jewish power as an elite hostile to the White European majority of America. Indeed, the organized Jewish community has not only been the most important force in ending the European bias of American immigration laws, it has assiduously courted alliances with non-White ethnic groups, including Blacks, Latinos, and Asians; and these groups are overwhelmingly aligned with the Democratic Party. As the Geert Wilders case shows, the organized Jewish community and the neocons (who often favor the Republicans) will not support any political candidate who is opposed to massive non-White immigration no matter how fervently they support Israel.

I suspect that most Jews simply don’t believe that Israel is in a dire emergency despite the machinations of Bill Kristol and his friends. And they are right. The Obama administration could doubtless have been more supine in the face of Israel’s behavior, but in fact Israel has done nothing to conform to any putative US pressure. Indeed, as Uri Avnery notes, “For two years now he has succeeded in thwarting every effort by Barack Obama to compel him to start a real peace process. He has defeated him at every turn, time after time. Now Obama has suffered a stinging setback at home, and a new chapter has begun.” Netanyahu recently turned down a plea to postpone settlement building for two months, a move seen as intended to give Obama no help immediately before the election. If Israel can thumb its nose at a Democratic administration with a solidly Democratic Congress, where’s the emergency?

Moreover, in March it took AIPAC only three days to get 327 members of the House to pass a resolution asking the Obama administration to stop pressuring Israel. All the leaders of both parties signed the letter. Some emergency.

And if there is no emergency, then Jews go into their default mode of voting Democrat. It’s a no brainer.

Finally, Alterman quotes a writer who suggests that “Israel-oriented attack campaigns aren’t really aimed at Jewish voters so much as they are aimed at conservative Christians anxious about terrorism and who imagine themselves as having some kind of religious/cultural kinship with Jews.”

The CNN exit poll found that 78% of Christian Evangelicals voted Republican in the Congressional races—the most lop-sided percentage for any religious group. Nevertheless, the recent pro-Israel campaigns are not likely to have been critical. In 2008, Evangelicals voted 70% Republican in Congressional races. This is less than in the recent election, but surely the increase from 2008-2010 is most likely due to the general Republican surge among all White groups in this election, brought on by disenchantment with Obama and the Democrats. In other words, it is much more likely to be due to the increased racialization of American politics brought on by the reality of the Obama administration than to Bill Kristol fanning the flames of an emergency over Israel.