Quadrennial observers of the Jewish vote might be surprised by the support American Jews gave to Bill Clinton in the 1992 presidential election—surprised not by the fact of that support, but by its overwhelming size. After all, beginning in 1972 there had been a perceptible shift by Jews away from their once all-but-total commitment to the Democratic party. Yet here was George Bush receiving only 15 percent of the Jewish vote—less than any incumbent President in this century, and matched in its paucity only by Barry Goldwater in his landslide loss to Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Does the en masse return of the Jews to the Democratic party portend something permanent?

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Despite their small numbers—they constitute less than 3 percent of the American population and only 4 percent of all voters—the way Jews vote has always aroused substantial political interest. In large measure this has stemmed from the accidents of geographic distribution: Jews are heavily concentrated in the states which are electorally significant—New York (where they constitute close to 20 percent of the voters), California, New Jersey, Florida, Illinois, and Pennsylvania.

But interest in the Jewish vote is also a byproduct of the status that Jews have attained in American society. Not only are they unusually affluent, they occupy important positions in America’s elite opinion-making fields: education, journalism and the media, politics, and law. Moreover, they have become prodigious fund-raisers and fund-givers to political campaigns: approximately 20 percent of the more than 250 individuals who donated $100,000 to join President Bush’s prestigious “Team 100” club were Jewish, and Jews were large contributors to the Clinton campaign. Thus, though even a major swing in the Jewish vote from one candidate to another would amount to only a tiny shift in the overall national voting statistics, Jewish political attitudes and voting patterns tell us a great deal about the movement of elite opinion in American political culture.

For nearly 75 years, Jews have shown a virtually congenital proclivity to pull the Democratic lever. With the exception of blacks, there is no group in America—including even union members and welfare recipients—more loyal to the Democratic party. In the sixteen presidential elections since 1932, with the sole exception of 1980, between 65 and 90 percent of Jews have voted for the Democratic candidate. And in every presidential election since 1924, Jews have voted Democratic by about 25 percent more than the overall electorate.

Jews are also more likely than most other Americans to identify themselves as liberals and/ or Democrats. In 1992, when 38 percent of Americans described themselves as Democrats and 35 percent as Republicans, 65 percent of all Jewish voters reported themselves as Democrats, while only 13 percent considered themselves Republican.

Notwithstanding all this, however, it is also the case that starting in the late 1960’s, the Jewish romance with liberalism and hence with the Democratic party began to show signs of unease. Jews had been vocal supporters of the early civil-rights movement, and many had even traveled to Selma and Birmingham in the early 60’s to take part in demonstrations led by Martin Luther King, Jr. But by the middle of the decade the civil-rights movement itself had begun to change. A turning point was 1966, when Stokely Carmichael became president of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and declared:

We been saying freedom for six years—and we ain’t got nothin’. . . . I’m not going to beg the white man for anything I deserve. I’m going to take it.

In the years that followed, the civil-rights movement came to be eclipsed by the black-power movement, increasingly violent and also increasingly anti-Semitic. At the same time, the American Left in general was being taken over by radical elements hostile to Jewish interests and, in the aftermath of Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War, to Israel.

The effect of this on electoral politics was a bit delayed. In 1968, the Democratic candidate for President, Hubert Humphrey, was a liberal in the old style—and a hero to American Jews. On election day, though narrowly beaten for the presidency by Richard Nixon, he received more than 80 percent of the Jewish vote.

Four years later, however, the story was very different. In 1972, the Democrats nominated George McGovern, the candidate of the New Left, and for the first time substantial numbers of Jews felt they had something to fear. McGovern was seen as “untrustworthy” on Israel: he talked about reducing the U.S. military presence in the Mediterranean, about returning the territories captured by Israel in 1967 to the Arabs, even about internationalizing Jerusalem. And in the domestic arena he was seen as championing redistributive policies inimical to traditional American economic and social arrangements and hence to the Jewish position within American society.

The results of the 1972 election showed American Jews still solidly Democratic, but with a growing number prepared to vote for a Republican. True, Jews supported McGovern by nearly 30 percent more than did the rest of the electorate, but they also gave Richard Nixon, that old nemesis of liberals, a startling 35 percent of their vote.

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A curious paradox occurred four years later, in 1976. Jimmy Carter, more moderate on social issues than McGovern, received about the same percentage of the Jewish vote as had McGovern; but overall the Jewish vote was only 15 percent more pro-Democratic than that of the rest of the electorate. This decline in Jewish enthusiasm for the Democrats can be explained by the fact that, its candidate notwithstanding, the party still seemed to be in the grip of the New Left—and also by the fact that in 1973 a Republican administration had helped rescue Israel from the brink of disaster during the Yom Kippur War, and in 1975 had stood up in the United Nations against the infamous Zionism/ racism resolution. Many American Jews were unsure whether Carter would have done the same.

By the 1980 election, more of them had made up their minds—at least about where Jimmy Carter stood on Israel. In spite of his role in achieving the Camp David accords, the only peace agreement in history between Israel and a neighboring Arab nation, he was judged as essentially anti-Israel on the grounds of both his rhetoric and his record.

The breaking point may have come on March 1, 1980, when Carter’s UN ambassador, Donald F. McHenry, voted in favor of a flagrantly anti-Israel resolution in the Security Council; three weeks later, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance refused to disavow the vote in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In a presidential primary held only a few days later, the Jews of New York overwhelmingly supported Senator Edward Kennedy over the incumbent President, and on election day Carter received the smallest percentage of Jewish votes—45 percent—of any Democratic candidate since before FDR. His challenger, Ronald Reagan, garnered a record high of 39 percent. (Fifteen percent went to the independent, John Anderson.)

By the mid-1980’s, economic and military aid to Israel had reached new heights, and intelligence-sharing and joint military maneuvers between the two countries had become routine. The strategic relationship that developed between the United States and Israel in the 1980’s, together with the Reagan administration’s hawkish position on international terrorism and, at home, its rhetorical opposition to quotas, helped boost President Reagan’s popularity in the Jewish community.

But old fears proved stronger than new attachments. The 1984 election, held in the midst of the longest economic expansion since World War II, pitted a popular incumbent President against Jimmy Carter’s former Vice President, Walter Mondale. In the most lopsided ballot since 1972, Reagan won nearly 60 percent of the popular vote and carried all but Mondale’s home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia. Nevertheless, and despite Reagan’s strong support for Israel, his proportion of the Jewish vote dropped substantially, to 31 percent—in fact, Jews were the only group of white voters in America to give Reagan fewer votes in 1984 than in 1980. Mondale, on the other hand, whom many Jews considered the “son of Hubert Humphrey,” won the Jewish vote resoundingly—67 percent.

Why? The short answer is: the rise of the religious Right. Like the Republican convention to be held in Houston eight years later, the 1984 Republican convention ignited the fears of Jewish voters who might otherwise have been disposed to go for Reagan. Particularly potent events at the convention itself were the prominent role accorded to the Reverend Jerry Falwell, leader of the Moral Majority, and President Reagan’s statement at a prayer breakfast during the week of the convention that “religion and politics are necessarily related.”

In the eyes of Jewish voters, the threat from the Right was apparently even more menacing than the threat within the Democratic party from the Left. That latter threat was embodied by Jesse Jackson, then regularly seen in photographic embrace with the likes of Yasir Arafat. But as frightened as Jews undoubtedly were by Jackson’s prominence in the Democratic party, they were more frightened by Jerry Falwell.

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Which brings us to 1988. Of the two candidates that year, George Bush was seen by most Jews as a more moderate version of Ronald Reagan; certainly there was little about him that seemed threatening, and there were some things that seemed positive—such as the fact, which Bush’s campaign publicized, that as Vice President he had played a major role in engineering “Operation Moses,” the first airlift of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Michael Dukakis, the governor of Massachusetts, on the other hand, was seen as a more leftish version of Walter Mondale, and as a captive of the Democrats’ special interests, especially Jesse Jackson. In the November election, Bush came in with a slight improvement over Reagan’s 1984 performance, getting 35 percent of the Jewish vote to Dukakis’s 64 percent.

And, finally, 1992. Simply stated, George Bush made almost every mistake possible, and Bill Clinton made almost none. Bush’s statement in September 1991 that he was “one lonely little guy” up against a “thousand [Jewish] lobbyists,” combined with the allegation that Secretary of State James Baker had used a four-letter epithet to derogate the Jewish community, were final straws for many Jews who were already disturbed by the administration’s handling of issues of importance to Israel. And Jews also feared that Bush had been “captured” by the religious Right. Especially worrying was the prime-time speech at the Republican convention by Patrick J. Buchanan, himself a failed presidential candidate, whom many Jews already considered anti-Semitic; that speech characterized the 1992 election as a “religious war” for the soul of America.

Bill Clinton, by contrast, ran as a “new kind of Democrat,” a middle-of-the-road candidate no longer beholden to the liberal Left. During the primary campaign, Clinton even engineered a widely-publicized feud with Jesse Jackson by criticizing Sister Souljah, a black rap singer who had made racist remarks after the Los Angeles riot. In the end, Jews who voted for Clinton believed they were getting the best of all worlds: a politically moderate, pro-Israel Democrat.

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Looking at the Jewish vote in the presidential elections from 1972 to 1992, we see a clear pattern emerging. The Democrats appear to have retained their historic lock on well over half the Jewish vote; but the rest can swing. What controls the swing is the fear factor—the extent and depth of Jewish apprehensions on specific issues. Some of these apprehensions, concerning Israel, say, or racial politics, tend to move Jewish voters to the Right. Others, concerning the role of religion in public life and—more recently—abortion, move them to or keep them on the Left.

Abortion, in particular, has become a major issue for Jewish voters. Jews are the single most pro-choice group within the electorate. Sixty-two percent favor abortion-on-demand, and 99 percent oppose a total ban on abortion. In this respect (but not on the issue of Israel), they represent a mirror image of evangelical Christians, who are the most pro-life sector of the electorate, with 87 percent opposing abortion-on-demand and 26 percent favoring a total ban. In 1992, according to exit polls, abortion was a “very important issue” to only 12 percent of the general electorate, but it was ranked as one of the three most important issues to evangelicals and as the second most important issue—after only the economy—to Jews under the age of forty-five. As a whole, Jews support an unqualified right to abortion by roughly 30 percent more than does the rest of the electorate.

The radically pro-choice Jewish position on abortion rights may seem a mystery to some. There is certainly no evidence that Jewish women have either an excessive number of unwanted pregnancies or a disproportionate number of abortions. Jewish women, among the most highly educated members of our society, are undoubtedly well-informed about various forms of contraception. Nevertheless, Jews in general, and Jewish women in particular, are at the forefront of the abortion-rights movement.

The reason is not far to seek. Jews are among the most urban, wealthy, and secular Americans, and Jewish women have not only been prominent in the feminist movement but also among its leading beneficiaries. If the stereotypical Jewish woman of the 1950’s either taught in the public schools or stayed at home, today’s Jewish woman more likely resembles Zoe Baird: a fully-credentialed member of the yuppie-careerist class, with politics to match.

So much for sociology. Ideologically, Jewish support for abortion rights rests primarily on the commitment to individual freedom that is central to the secular humanism with which most assimilated Jews—and that means most Jews by far—identify. Indeed, in the Jewish community, the issue of abortion has been framed solely in terms of women’s rights rather than the rights of the fetus. (It is also important to understand that even traditional religious Jews oppose an absolute ban on abortion, which, while generally prohibited under Jewish law, is not regarded as murder and may actually be mandated when the woman’s health, physical or mental, is in jeopardy.) Thus, the vigor of Jewish support for abortion rights is allied to fears about the imposition of essentially Christian religious values in a purportedly secular realm, and flows naturally from single-minded devotion to the idea of an inviolable wall separating church and state. Abortions may be sinful, goes an unstated Jewish objection, but what business is it of the government to regulate sin?

It seems, then, that in the last two elections American Jews have become two-issue voters: Israel and abortion. Ironically, both may be waning as factors that crystallize the differences between the two political parties. Regarding the Middle East peace process, for example, President Clinton not only appears to be perpetuating most of the Bush-Baker policies, but he has even retained the key Bush State Department personnel who shaped those policies. By the same token, given the Supreme Court’s recent decision (in Casey v. Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania) to uphold a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion, abortion rights would appear to be less threatened now than at any time during the past twelve years. In fact, the majority opinion in Casey was written by Reagan and Bush appointees.

Still, it remains the case that today the Democrats are the party identified with the pro-choice position, the Republicans with the pro-life—another reason for Jews who are anyway more comfortable on the Democratic side to stay there, and for those who may have temporarily strayed to return.

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But does the precipitous twelve-year drop from Reagan’s 39 percent of the Jewish vote to Bush’s 15 signify a definitive disenchantment with the Republican party? There is another set of political numbers, spanning the same twelve years, which may suggest a somewhat different interpretation.

New York Senator Alfonse D’Amato, a Republican, is everything most Jews are not. He is the very essence of a working-class “machine politician.” He is also Italian, Catholic, basically conservative, and even has a pro-life voting record in Congress. Yet despite having been opposed in his three Senate races by Jewish candidates, D’Amato has steadily increased his popularity in the Jewish community.

In 1980, D’Amato squared off against two Jewish opponents, the liberal Democratic Congress-woman Elizabeth Holtzman (who had run to the Left of her primary opponent, Bess Myerson) and the incumbent Senator, Jacob Javits (a Republican running on the Liberal line who was very popular with Jews but who was then gravely ill). In that year, even though the national Republican ticket, led by Reagan, captured almost 40 percent of the Jewish vote nationally, D’Amato got only 8 percent in New York. There, the Jewish predisposition to vote Democratic was so strong that Holtzman received nearly three times the combined Jewish vote of Javits and D’Amato.

Six years later, however, having built a strong reputation as one of Israel’s best friends in Congress, D’Amato increased his Jewish vote to 34 percent, this time in a race against the liberal consumer activist Mark Green. And finally, during the 1992 race, in which he studiously avoided any public discussion of abortion but instead trumpeted his vote to override George Bush’s veto of the “Family Leave” bill, hugely popular with Jewish women, he got 41 percent of the Jewish vote. This was especially impressive since his opponent, State Attorney General Robert Abrams, would seem to have had the perfect Jewish pedigree: respected lawyer, Zionist, activist for Soviet Jews, and a member of an established Orthodox congregation.

It appears, then, that many Jews do not automatically vote for a Democratic ticket. The lesson of George Bush’s miserable showing in the Jewish community, and of Alfonse D’Amato’s success, is that issues can count more than party affiliation. The lesson is underlined by the success won with Jewish voters in recent years by Republicans like Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter (who is Jewish) and former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean (who is not).

There are, moreover, two identifiable segments of the Jewish community that provide hope for Republicans: the Orthodox and the young. Orthodox Jews, who share much of their political agenda with religious Christians, vote heavily for Republicans—in some hasidic neighborhoods by as much as 75 percent (D’Amato got over 90 percent of the hasidic vote). The large number of ultra-Orthodox Jews is the reason that George Bush, who was massively defeated in New York City, got a somewhat higher percentage of the Jewish vote there than nationally, despite the loss of some of the Hasidim who had supported him in 1988. Younger Jews, too, are less attached to the Democratic party than their seniors. In 1992, Jews under forty voted for Clinton by 7 percent less than did older Jews. It remains to be seen whether these younger Jews will revert to their parents’ voting patterns as they grow older.

For watchers of the Jewish vote, New York City’s 1993 mayoral race should provide the next set of clues. According to a recent poll published in the New York Daily News, the former federal prosecutor and one-time mayoral candidate Rudolph Giuliani, a Republican, is running in a dead heat with Mayor David Dinkins citywide, but is beating the mayor in the Jewish community by a margin of 2-1. The reason Giuliani is popular among Jews is that the fear factor is working in his favor. On the one hand, Dinkins’s mishandling of the race riot against Jews in Crown Heights has caused many to believe that he is too weak to stand up to the forces of black anti-Semitism in the city. And, on the other hand, the fact that Giuliani is pro-choice has eliminated a major obstacle to Jewish support for a Republican.

That the large majority of Jews will remain Democratic in presidential elections seems fairly certain, at least for the foreseeable future. But like other American voters, Jews appear to be shedding their party loyalties and becoming more issue-oriented. Jewish apprehensions will continue to shape the Jewish vote, and candidates who alleviate those fears will be most successful in the Jewish community. For the time being, the most interesting action will be at the state and local levels, where candidates from both parties can explore positions that differ from their parties’ orthodoxies. In those races, the Jewish vote may truly be up for grabs.

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