August 15, 2006
The Ethnic Vote Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 12:00 PM EST There’s a column in Newsweek by Rabbi Marc Gellman, a noted Jewish political commentator, that raised my eyebrows. “Joe Lieberman did not lose the Democratic primary because of his support for the war in Iraq,” Gellman boldly claims. “He lost because of his lack of support from Jews. Joe got the support of black Baptists (except of course for Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson who stood so conspicuously behind challenger Ned Lamont on election night). He got the support of Catholic Union guys. He got the support of all the Connecticut papers, and he got the support of most Jews, but not at all an overwhelming number of Jews and that is why he lost.”
For starters, Al Sharpton was licensed and ordained by Bishop F. D. Washington, a Pentecostal minister. Jesse Jackson received his theological training at the Chicago Theological Seminary, which is affiliated with the United Church of Christ. Whether they have since ministered to Baptist congregations, I don’t know. But not all black ministers are Baptists. More to the point, Joe Lieberman did not win the black vote in last week’s primary election. According to the CBS News/New York Times exit poll, Ned Lamont won 55 percent of the black vote to Lieberman’s 41 percent. The poll does not distinguish between Baptists and members of other traditionally black churches (like the AME Church), but unless Gellman has access to better polling data, his premise is way off.
There’s a lot more that’s wrong with Gellman’s column.
Gellman’s argument—that Connecticut Jews somehow ruined Joe Lieberman—ignores two facts: First, 61 percent of Jewish primary voters voted for Lieberman (giving him a higher ratio of votes than any other racial-ethnic-religious group), and second, Jews have been voting ideology over tribe for half a century.
While in the early twentieth century American immigrant groups often gravitated toward candidates from their own communities, since World War II they have demonstrated ethnic voting patterns that are ideological, but not tribal, in nature.
In the fall of 1960 political observers were astonished to learn that the Catholic vote in New York was very much up for grabs, notwithstanding the presence of John F. Kennedy—a third-generation Irish-American—on the
Democratic presidential ticket. “If Jack Kennedy thinks he has the Catholic vote in his back pocket,” said an Irish Catholic political activist from the Bronx, “he’s wrong.”
In a series of interviews with city Catholics, The New York Times found that most shared a deep concern about “communism, both at home and abroad—with most thinking the Republicans are better at opposing it than the Democrats.” Though Kennedy claimed unimpeachable anticommunist credentials, most of the Catholic voters who spoke with The New York Times viewed him as less credible on the issue than Richard Nixon, because they viewed Republicans as better anti-communists.
Indeed, when I was researching my graduate dissertation several years ago, I was astonished to discover the following line in a private survey conducted for New York City Mayor Robert Wagner (a Catholic) in March 1961. Pollster Louis Harris found that “the Catholic vote is not in good shape, and, with the exception of the Italians, now appears ripe for voting Republican in this fall’s election. The Irish, who were also not with Kennedy last fall, now seem ready to leave the Democratic party in droves in this year’s municipal election. The Italians at the moment are evenly split.”
In other words, Kennedy narrowly lost New York City’s Irish Catholic vote in 1960, and Wagner was poised to lose it by an even wider margin in 1961.
Another case in point was New York’s 1956 U.S. Senate election, which pitted the liberal Republican Rep. Jacob Javits (about whom much has already been said on this blog) against Mayor Wagner. Wagner, an outspoken liberal, was the son of the late Sen. Robert Wagner, who was widely revered by city Jews for his sponsorship of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act. In 1956 voters in heavily Jewish neighborhoods rejected their co-religionist, Javits, by a wide margin, delivering 81.5 percent of their votes to Wagner. They made the calculation that a liberal Democrat was better than a liberal Republican, no matter what his religion might be.
Facts and history aside, what bothers me about Gellman’s post is the notion that Jews are somehow bound to support other Jews on election day. This argument bothers me as a Jew, and as an American. Gellman writes, “There are and have always been only two kinds of Jews: tribal Jews and cosmopolitan Jews. Tribal Jews love anything Jewish. Cosmopolitan Jews love anything but Jewish. Tribal Jews are not trying to pass, assimilate or deny their tribal roots, their attachment to Israel and their love of other Jews no matter who they are. Cosmopolitan Jews are trying to pass and assimilate and become an undifferentiated member of the majority culture. The problem with tribal Jews is that they have trouble loving non-Jews. The problem with cosmopolitan Jews is that they have trouble loving other Jews.”
The so-called “cosmopolitan” Jews who voted for Ned Lamont last week don’t have a problem “loving other Jews.” They have a problem with the war in Iraq. If Rabbi Gellman doesn’t understand this, he’s hopelessly out of touch with his own community.
|
