Why Jewish Americans vote Democratic

A striking aspect of the new Pew survey on Jewish Americans is how liberal Jews are. Is it good for the Democrats? You bet.

Why do people vote the way to do? For swing voters, the answer is usually the state of the economy. For most, however, voting patterns are surprisingly fixed. People tend to vote for one party consistently over time. For Jewish American voters, the party of choice has been the Democratic party.

Conservatives have been trying to crack the code for a number of years on how to get Jewish voters over to their side. Based on the findings of the new "Portrait of Jewish Americans" survey from the Pew Research Center, Republicans will need to find a different key. Jews are likely going to be Democrats for the foreseeable future.

Let's start with the fact that the most important determining factor of voting pattern is partisan affiliation. If you identify as a Democrat, you are far more likely to vote Democratic than if you identify as an independent or a Republican. In this instance, 70% of Jews self-identify as leaning to or members of the Democratic party. That compares with just 49% of the American public overall who at least lean Democratic. Only 22% of Jews consider themselves as leaning Republican, compared to 39% of the overall public. Orthodox Jews, who represent no more than 10% of the United States' Jewish population, tend to make up the majority of Republican Jews.

Given their self-identification, it's unlikely that Jewish Americans will break from their Democratic ways. But a closer look at why Jews are Democratic should give Republicans further pause....

Blacks went to the better panderer

This ideology of Jews....particularly Ashkenazim from east of the Rhine

Is more entrenched....I don’t think out pandering will change them

As I’ve aged I realize how much how you were raised and your family and regional culture plays

I’m southern white baptist.....social conservatism is natural to me

BTW....blacks turned to Dems in 1930s under New Deal.....not after Reconstruction ended

Plus I think most Jews....like anyone else can....will claim minority victim hood for the benefits

Tear down existing order that oppresses us.....which is utter bullshit in their case....hell they are the order these days

But its an easy lazy excuse to act in ones self interest

Plus its get back for some Country Club slight from the 1930s grandma always kvetched over

Why do Indians and Chinese and Japs.....do the same....they all prosper here too

I beg to differ

I am from the blackest state there is and was a teen in the upheavals like marches and forced busing in 1969

Black culture in 1960 was far more problematic than white.....they were not equals in cultural barometers

Illegitimacy was 20%....white around 1-2%

Crime was worse in black areas but nothing like now ....it was perfectly safe to be a white man or even woman and your car break down at nite in a black area in Jackson MS in 1963....now its a death or rape sentence

Civil rights and Great Society and so forth basically expounded an existing but manageable problem and resulted in an 80% lost black populace

And in the process overall cultural decay really hammered white illegitimacy

My son converted to Judaism and has a Jewish wife. They visit her family in Haifa four months out of every year. She is a staunch Democrat. She believes that the Democratic party is the party that helps the little people and the Republican party represents the rich to help the screw the little people. Her filthy rich family all believe the same. They do fear Obama and voted against him in 2012, but will vote for Hillary in 2016.

Helping the poor and caring about your fellow man trumps Israel. Evangelical Christians are vipers that hate as is evidenced by their anti-Mormonism and anti-Papism. Evangelicals are ruled by greed and sanctimony. She believes Evangelicals are just as big of a threat to humanity as Islam. Her circle believe that Evangelicals are to blame for the reelection of Obama due to their rabid anti-Mormonism.

My son claims that her attitude is the norm among the Jews he knows which are many.

Their reaction began way before Roosevelt, before the turn of the century.

I would disagree with your chronology. I would say that 1928 was really the first presidential election in which the later arriving Eastern European Jewish immigrants and their descendants predominated among Jewish voters and swung the Jewish vote strongly to the 'Rats. (BTW, you might be surprised to know that the Herbert Hoover campaign for re-election in 1932 did engage in specifically soliciting Jewish voters; the RNC published at least one pamphlet in Yiddish with Hoover's photo on it extolling the merits of the candidate for Yiddish language readers.)

For the previous half-century or more, the Jewish electorate was composed percentagewise more of earlier German Jewish immigrants and their descendants who were generally much wealthier (some were famous entrepreneurs) and more assimilated and tended to be Republicans with an affinity for the legacy of Lincoln. The best reference on these German Jewish immigrants and their descendants in the late 19th century is the book "Our Crowd," by Stephen Birmingham, which was a best-seller when it was released c. 1970(?).

Grievance politics unites disparate minorities in unthinking opposition to the majority, even against rational self interest. The politics of grievance is an unthinking ersatz ethnic loyalty, wherein one defines oneself in opposition, rather than in being. It leads Jews to support political correctness, immigration of Muslims, and Third Worldism, even though these are all against their rational self interest as an Americans or as a Jews. It leads black leaders to support immigration, liberal social politics, and objectively failing education and social models. Alienation and grievance politics leads immigrants to support many of the policies they fled from. (This isn't just a minority issue. Think how many liberal economic emigres overwhelm formerly conservative areas. They flee taxes but demand the social welfare state, spreading the disease.) The children of immigrant minorities are inherently alienated. (I know, I am one, despite being brought up among the NY elite.) They benefit from affirmative action and see government as their protector against the majority. Any failure of the state to create a perfect life for them is not the failure of the nanny state but the fault of conservatives and the majority.
Grievance politics rots the mind. It is indicative of a collective mental illness.
Don't expect non-Orthodox Jews to wake up. Those who do face ostracism. (Not to mention financial cost, since most corporations in cities are profoundly PC.)

That is a myth the left created, the actual reversal took place in 1936.

Fair enough, but that still doesn't support the previous poster's claim that the black transition from Republican votes to Democratic votes marks a shift from conservatism to liberalism.

In 1932, FDR ran as a conservative, or at least as a moderate (as did Woodrow Wilson). By 1936, he was running as a promoter of his New Deal and the fledgling welfare state, while Republicans were running as opponents.

Until 1936, there was no party of the welfare state, so by default blacks voted for the party of Lincoln and reconstruction (moreover, the Democratic party was arguably more fiscally conservative in the 19th century: witness Grover Cleveland).

So the real PC myth is that blacks were once "conservatives" (just because they voted Republican), only to be corrupted into liberalism. That line of thinking comes from naively projecting today's political debates and party lines back decades or centuries when they simply did not apply.

"Higher criticism" was actually intended by its pioneers to be a vindication of chrstianity by showing that the Torah was (has veshalom!) a "Pharasaic" imposture written later than the Prophets, and that chrstianity was a "restoration" of this alleged original, "pure," pre-Torah form of "prophetic Judaism."

All this has been forgotten today. Now higher criticism is considered a nefarious plot against chrstianity, and most people don't even know the traditional Jewish teaching that every single letter of the Torah comes directly from G-d (in fact it is forbidden to reject a single letter of the Torah). This is now actually considered a "chrstian" concept (Protestant, to be precise) and most people think Jews don't have a dog in that fight.

Well put..

I honestly am one who welcomes the additional data exposed by this source theory. But, I am also someone who believes that this text is one of the best preserved and keenly one of the most if not the most reliable history of all available texts in this world.

Just as in the "Christian" Bible, these sources when viewed in an accepting rather than rejecting context are complementary "witness" statements. Just as the exposition of the four disciples have deep contradictions, this is the nature of true witness statements rather than colluded fabrications that fear rather than proclaim and value truth. The two histories preserved into our modern five Books of Moses have been identified as stitching together of the records kept by the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom. Rather than omit a single word, the "Redactor" just folded these together side by side because no word was more replaceable or sacred and this was just passed to us as our inheritance. Both of the accounts agree on matters of substance but also vary in focus and nature of the text and narrative.

For some reason, I don't understand, people just look at these texts and their dating and say.. well these are too new. But, they know darn well, that the old records were on clay tablets and not sheep skin. Thus when the first Temple was destroyed, this old text and all of the lost books referred to in the transcriptions of this text were lost. Why is that such a mystery? For the people of that time it was a misery, but what can be done?

Archeology is slowly unearthing what support that is possible considering that there are people who want any evidence destroyed. They depend on people rejecting God so that they might continue to reap the wealth and power they achieve by the enslavement of people who don't understand that faith is the foundation of freedom.

The Bible as a whole is an amazing document. Like a fractal image, changing yet staying the same, bringing meaning in ways that people of all of the hundreds of generations from the time of Abraham could use in their own time. Abraham's relationship and understanding of God is just as hard to pass on today as it was in his time. But, he didn't have this wondrous text and the work of the brightest minds of every generation after to help him pass this to Isaac. We are infinitely blessed and this document is so much more than what a single human could accomplish, and a message aimed at the hearts of each living soul in each generation, and someone dares to claim that God couldn't accomplish this?

People who think this small only consider the pebbles in front of them and think they are the entirety of the wonders of this universe.

A lot of it is brainwashing and mythology passed down through the generations, starting with immigrants from pre-Soviet Eastern Europe from whom the majority of today's American Jews are descended.

The answer to this is context. In some contexts, Jews are wildly open minded. In others, Political Correct thinking forms an implacable group norm. I belong to a "Liberal" congregation and my presence is like a huge wet blanket because I will "reproach" when people make statements that I believe are unfair even at the cost of my own acceptance. I am just tolerated because of this and not eligible for any leadership position or position of authority. It is a price if you see it as that. But, we see this same system in the Universities of America.. Conservative voices are tolerated at best and completely excluded if they cause "too much" pain.

This is not necessarily what you could call brain washing but the techniques are definitely those of the commissars and these people are concentrated primarily in the secular and leftist (Reform, Humanist and elements of the Modern Orthodox communities) but the "theoretical" work to understand how the tactics of just a few well placed "minders" or operatives can move a whole community even against their own interests have just been recently exposed as part of the growing body of knowledge called "Crowd Sourcing."

Though I don't expect many folks to get this, the best summary the power of "Political Correct" speech codes and the creation of "group norms" that are enforced by group members is available here:

Dunbar, Altruistic Punishment, and Meta-Moderation

Every Tea Party Member, Every Pro-Lifer and any real "Human Rights activist" needs to understand this process, and especially the leaders need to get their heads around this data.

This is how the Black community, Jewish Community, and many others are continuously played into rejecting all messages of the reality of their situation vs. the fantasy that their "appointed" leaders are spinning. Margaret Sanger and bunch understood with without the graphs and such. They knew if you got Black Ministers and Rabbis to accept abortion as a "positive" good then their congregations would happily create their own "gas chambers" and kill their very own children so that in just a few generations, these unwanted people would be wiped from the face of this earth.

I appreciate your good intentions, but I'm afraid you don't understand.

The Torah doesn't come from clay tablets, nor does it have multiple sources of any kind. According to Tradition the Torah was written entirely by G-d, 974 generations before the Creation. It actually preceded the universe and is in fact its "blueprint," its "DNA." In fact, one tradition insists that the universe was literally made from the letters of the 'Alef-Beit.

In the 26th generation of Creation, the Torah was given to Israel; HaShem dictated it letter-by-letter, and Moses wrote it down (there is an opinion that the narrative of Moses' death was written by Joshua, but Moses could in fact have taken down the dictation of his own death just as he took down the rest of the Torah). Even the medieval "arch-rationalist" Maimonides insisted in his Thirteen Principals of Faith that the entire Torah which Israel possesses was given to Moses. And some six hundred years later, another "arch-rationalist" (Vilna Ga'on) insisted that the Torah contains every fact about everything that has ever existed, whether human, animal, plant or mineral, and that it does so down to the smallest detail.

Moses wrote the first Torah Scrolls at HaShem's dictation and they have been faithfully copied since that time by scribes who follow the most rigorous rules, including one that commands them to have a complete kosher Torah Scroll before them as they transcribe. So there are no "sources" or "clay tablets." It all comes from G-d directly and unmediated.

The purest form of the Word of G-d is the Halakhically written kosher Torah Scrolls kept in the 'aronot of synagogues throughout the world and throughout history, not the texts that chrstian and atheist scholars use.

The Torah doesn't come from clay tablets, nor does it have multiple sources of any kind. According to Tradition the Torah was written entirely by G-d, 974 generations before the Creation.

This fact was conveniently left out of the Torah itself and this is an external teaching. (As you say Tradition) But, ultimately, such reckonings are meaningless and frankly destructive aim to opening the minds of the current swarms of humanity.

Maimonides and my Great Great Great... G'father aside.. I would argue, be careful not to worship Torah for this is also a form of idolatry. And, as they say, you are welcome to your own and many agreeing opinions, but even an overwhelming consensus doesn't make non-sense into a fact. Ask the Global Warming crowd.

Fortunately for Torah, the document bears the level of distortion you wish to apply to it and rewards those who use this to assist them in accepting it. So, good for you. If this satisfies you, good enough.

But, for me, I know the crisis we are navigating is entirely created because this explanation was blown up as misleading, manipulative and indistinguishable from any other explanation made up out of whole cloth.

We both know though, that often, parables and explanations that bright minds share with those trying to learn are indeed blessings. So, there is no fault that attaches necessarily in such teachings, except when they are false on their face to the person hearing them. Then such explanations destroy the credibility of the teacher and thus the value of the lesson.

Nevertheless, the real problem is that this line of teaching has been tried and lost 70-80% of the worlds Jews to every manner of distraction. You can argue that perhaps these folks are best completely lost. I would argue this is a distinct possibility but not what Abraham would have probably wanted if you could ask him today.

I would argue that God is perfect and Torah is a blessing, because the hands of man are too obvious on the pages of Torah. Nevertheless, I also argue that God shapes and fashions this world and all that is in it with the hands of man, as well as, older ways. So a deeper thinker would say, every letter of the Torah was created by God and this would not at all be an untruth.

Torah was written entirely by G-d, 974 generations before the Creation.

I find myself insanely wanting to take another bite out of this.

You can make this argument, and it is actually great teaching.

The horrible teachings are the ones that are being espoused by Scientism. (The worship of science) And its traveling companions, the most unsavory and nightmarish of these is Atheism. Atheists espouse to believe in nothing. And, nothing is the one unique thing that this entire universe will not permit; and further one could argue this is true beyond this and any multiverse and any imaginable unlimited context that be speculated by the mind of man.

Rather, Atheists are shrinking violets and timid against the challenge of accepting the true majesty of our existence and our relationship to all else that isn't our own mind. I argue that the reason we as Jews eschew idolatry is that it blinds the eyes from coming to terms with God as "Not a thing." God is outside of our ability to sense, measure, or perceive with our physical senses. Yet, we can perceive God at every moment through our connection to him via our soul, which is also "not a thing" but rather a connection that is of God's level of existence and thus outside of our ability to comprehend anymore than a "flat-lander" can comprehend a cube. Kabbalistic study and teaching tries to scratch at this insight, but as you dig deeper, we find that this "nothing nature" is Gods most important aspect.

We are commanded to LOVE God, not because God is an affection junkie, but rather because this is a huge honking arrow on how to actually connect with God. How to realize Gods blessings and how to reflect these blessings on each life no matter how great or small that we touch. This occurs because of our very inability to focus on God as an image, concept, being, or anything of substance or location.

Rather, this love is real, and as such manifest in our current moment and reality and it has no outlet or direction except for the focus of attention of the individual who gives his heart and soul and very life to God. So instead, that love is focused on God's creation and the lives and misery of those around us. And, we are called to act. Torah has been given to us to help us choose to act in ways that assure that the consequences of our actions will not just create new evil.

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