America’s Jews Are Turning Away from the Democrats

For decades, most Jewish Americans voted Democrat. But this love affair is in crisis. A challenge for potential presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Hardly any other constant in American politics is as predictable as the voting behavior of Jews, the overwhelming majority of whom reliably vote Democrat. In 2008, Barack Obama, for example, received 78 percent of the American Jewish vote, and in his re-election in 2012 he still got 69 percent.

The sociologist Milton Himmelfarb used the following witticism to describe this striking voting pattern: “Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans.” By that he meant that for a long time now Jews have economically belonged to the WASP group (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants), but nevertheless still behave like a persecuted minority in the voting booth.*

The love affair began with the Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt who lives on in the American Jewish memory as a good Pharaoh. There are two reasons why he won Jewish hearts: firstly, because of the social democratic New Deal, which helped restore jobs to many middle class Jews during the economic crisis of the 1930’s (anti-Semitic opponents of the New Deal therefore derided it as the “Jew Deal”.)

Secondly, because Roosevelt led the American nation into World War II, and even before the attack on Pearl Harbor, helped the British hold out against Nazi Germany by supplying the British with arms. Anybody looking for a literary testimonial to the Jewish-American love for Franklin D. Roosevelt should read “The Plot Against America” by Philip Roth – a novel in which the author imagines the 1930’s if Nazi-sympathizer Charles Lindbergh had been elected to the White House instead of Roosevelt.

Separation of State and Religion

American Jewish sympathy for the Democrats has thus far survived every high and low: the victory of the civil rights movement (in which many Jews were involved), losing the Vietnam War (which the majority of Jews disapproved of from the start) and even the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.

I know American Jews for whom the thought of voting Republican makes them feel physically sick. There are many reasons for this: Jews are, as they say in English, “bleeding hearts” – since the days of biblical prophets, they dream of a socially just world. In addition, the Republican Party under Ronald Reagan secured an alliance with the Christian Right, which seriously believes that the United States is the land of Jesus.

America’s Jews don’t want to live in a Christian country though. For them, the First Amendment – which ensures a strict separation of state and religion – is their lifeblood.** In a multi-colored America that sees itself as home to all denominations of faith and ethnicity, Jews are simply citizens; in a Christian America they would be a minority pushed to the fringes.

The Threat from Iran

And Israel? In this case, as far as Jews are concerned, there’s actually no difference between Democrats and Republicans. Since at least 1967, support for the Jewish state is a raison d’étre for both parties. Israel – it was simply a reliable but also democratic ally in an area of the world plagued by mullahs, dictators and fundamentalists. At the same time, each American government has criticized the development of Israeli settlements in the western part of Jordan since the Six Day War and has tried to reach a peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

There have been many disputes and harsh words, for example the Israeli attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor Osirak, which Ronald Reagan strongly criticized at the time (George W. Bush later thanked the Israelis for this airstrike.) But American Jews never had the feeling that they would have to choose between their loyalty to the Democratic Party and their loyalty to Israel.

Until now. Since Bibi Netanyahu gave his speech to the American congress, the Jews are deeply divided in the Democratic Party; some still back Barack Obama, and they are outraged that the Israeli prime minister duped their president by trying to reach an agreement with Iran behind his back.

Yet other Jews are worried that Obama’s agreement with the “Islamic Republic” will ultimately lead to Iran building nuclear weapons – a result that would threaten the state of Israel’s existence. They are therefore disconcerted and are considering alternatives.

Similar Trend in the U.K.

Of course, Obama made sure that Israel was equipped with the “Iron Dome” in time, a defense system that protected many Israeli civilians from Hamas missiles during the recent war. Of course, under Obama, U.S. Armed Forces carried out a large joint maneuver with the Israeli Defense Force.

On the other hand, the man who was Israeli ambassador to Washington until two years ago and knows the history of the American-Israeli relationship better than anybody else, Michael Oren, said, “Israel’s ties with the U.S. are in the most serious crisis since 1975.” And the results of public opinion polls are revealing. Only 47 percent of Democrats state that they sympathize with Israel. Among the Republicans, the number is significantly higher: 83 percent.

Maybe conditions in the United States will soon be the same as in the United Kingdom. Jews there were also once allied to the Labor Party – the party membership card was practically handed out straight after circumcision. But since “Zionism” became a dirty word in the Labor Party, since Israel was called a Nazi, or rather, an apartheid state, many British Jews have lost any desire to vote left. They give their vote to the Tories.

Hillary Clinton will have her hands full if she wants to once again cement the alliance between Jews and Democrats. And I – as a registered Republican voter, feeling unhappy and basically politically homeless due to the actual situation of the present day Republican Party – will have an interesting problem in the upcoming presidential election.

*Editor’s note: White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, or WASP, is an informal, sometimes disparaging term for a group of influential white Americans of English Protestant ancestry, and is a term that applies to a group believed to hold elite status and exercise a high degree of privilege.

**Editor’s note: The establishment clause of the First Amendment prohibits all levels of government from either advancing or inhibiting religion.