To the Editor:

Milton Himmelfarb believes that George Bush should have been the preferred candidate among Jews in 1988 [“American Jews: Diehard Conservatives,” April]. That is a very respectable position to have taken, and to continue holding today. Thirty percent of the Jewish voters agreed with him. Events may yet prove him right—recent doubts about the administration’s policies toward the PLO, Israel, and the Soviet Union notwithstanding. Mr. Himmelfarb has every right to persist in his preference. But he has no right to engage in reckless and insulting characterizations of the 70 percent who disagreed with him (“addled,” “learned nothing and forgotten nothing,” etc.). His angry disappointment in Jewish voters cannot be buttressed by faulty, selective, incomplete statistical “analysis.”

Mr. Himmelfarb’s basic argument, reflected in the title itself, is that Jewish voters seem to have political genes that won’t let them abandon the Democratic party—even when a Jesse Jackson is such a major factor in it. Space is too limited here to permit a full accounting of huge Jewish votes for non-Democrats over the years—for Robert La Follette, Fiorello La Guardia, Jacob Javits, Clifford Case. Yes, Democratic presidential candidates have had impressive Jewish support for many years—from a low of 45 percent (Carter in 1980) to 91 percent (Johnson in 1964). But not automatically or uncritically. The range of 45 to 91 percent itself suggests quite a bit of selectivity and independence.

If Jews have favored the Democratic party over the Republican party so often, it must mean that the candidates and the policies of the respective parties prompted such preference. The CBS exit poll had a very revealing question that Mr. Himmelfarb somehow ignored in his mountain of statistics. Asked “Which factors mattered most in deciding how you voted?”—and permitted to select two responses—only 14 percent of the nation’s Jewish voters selected “He is my party’s candidate.” Twice as many selected “The vice-presidential candidates” and “Dukakis’s liberal views” as decisive factors. So perhaps there are no partisan genes in Jewish voters after all.

Jesse Jackson was, of course, a major factor in the 1988 contest—in the primaries, at the convention, and in the general election. Mr. Himmelfarb acknowledges, but hardly gives it the importance it deserves, that in the primaries Jewish voters displayed a most responsible and sophisticated judgment. Whatever degree of anti-Semitism or non-anti-anti-Semitism they were prepared to assign to Jackson, the overwhelming majority of Jewish voters correctly found no reason for preferring him to Paul Simon or Albert Gore or Michael Dukakis or Richard Gephardt or Bruce Babbitt. Contrary to the pattern that had surfaced over the years in every contest between a black and a white candidate, Jews gave Jackson less support (8 percent) than did whites generally (12 percent). He got such a low Jewish vote both because he had failed sufficiently to allay fears of anti-Semitism or hostility to Israel and because his policies generally were considered unacceptably Left-of-Center.

But how could any Jew support a candidate for President whose party had a Jesse Jackson in it?, Mr. Himmelfarb in effect wants to know. Because most Jews—and non-Jews—believe Jackson has a right to seek support for himself and for his policies. The test for Jews is whether he prevails—and he did not prevail. At the convention, Jackson’s plans on the Middle East, on a nuclear first-strike, and on tax policy were overwhelmingly rejected. He never got serious consideration for the vice presidency and had absolutely no role in the selection of Lloyd Bentsen. It is irresponsible, recklessly so, for Mr. Himmelfarb to assert—without even a semblance of documentation or analysis—that Dukakis would have been compelled “politically” to give Jackson veto power over key Cabinet appointments, or that “Jackson would be able to block American support for Israel.” During the campaign, Bush’s Jewish campaign workers did everything they could to scare Jewish voters into thinking that “a vote for Dukakis is a vote for Jackson.” But Jewish voters believed Dukakis when he declared clearly and publicly that there was no deal with Jackson for his support.

Mr. Himmelfarb charges Jewish voters with being “addled” after presenting a faulty interpretation of a poll taken by Steven M. Cohen showing that 25 percent of Jews were willing to support a Dukakis ticket even if Jackson were on it. I would think that Mr. Himmelfarb would be delighted to learn that no fewer than 45 percent (of the 70 percent who later actually voted for Dukakis) would have abandoned the Democratic candidate had Jackson been picked. But why is Mr. Himmelfarb shocked? The same poll showed that 44 percent of those polled were not convinced that Jackson was an anti-Semite. (Evidently, Mr. Himmelfarb is not sure himself; he keeps referring to Jackson as “an anti-Semite, or at least the loyal friend of the leading anti-Semite.”) So what is so significant about the fact that 25 percent of these 44 percent might be willing to stick with Dukakis?

The Jackson issue was important to Jewish voters. But it was not the only issue, much as the Jewish Republicans tried to make it so. To understand why the Dukakis vote was as high as it was, one must remember that perhaps overshadowing the Democrats’ Jackson problem was the shocking disclosure of former Nazis and Holocaust-deniers in key spots in the GOP and the Bush campaign. One must also understand the concerns over the influence of Bush’s campaign co-chairman, Governor John Sununu, the only governor out of fifty who refused to join in the demand for repeal of the UN resolution equating Zionism with racism. One must recall Bush’s positions on abortion, gun control, and other social issues on which most Jews had very strong feelings. In recalling these points, I do not mean to reargue the campaign. I cite them, objectively, as elements that contributed to Jewish voters’ decisions on election day.

I have a hunch that one of Mr. Himmelfarb’s favorite Jewish politicians must be Mayor Ed Koch. During the 1988 primaries, nobody was more anti-Jackson. (He preferred “crazy” to “addled.”) Yet on election day Koch voted for Dukakis. Like 70 percent of his fellow Jews—in New York, more than 70 percent—he felt the Jewish interest would not be betrayed by such a vote.

The Jackson factor remains a tough and problematic one, but also very complicated. Jackson cannot be dismissed with any simple or single label. How explain the fact that at the GOP convention, Governor DuPont used his entire ten-minute speech to appeal to Jesse Jackson to move his energies from the Democratic party to the Republican party, that he would find a more welcome home there? How explain that one of the first American leaders to be invited for a long talk with President-elect Bush was Jesse Jackson?

My friend Milton Himmelfarb is disappointed in his fellow Jews, convinced they voted against their best interests in 1988. Perhaps. We shall see. But his article doesn’t tell us how, or why.

Hyman Bookbinder
Washington, D.C.

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To the Editor:

Milton Himmelfarb correctly observes that there is a divergence between the voting patterns of Jews and those of other white voters. This continuing divergence is a source of embarrassment among Jewish neoconservatives, who like to adopt a “populist” tone (as defenders of the common man’s values against a minority of intellectuals), and therefore have trouble facing the fact that within the Jewish community they themselves are an “unpopular” intellectual minority (if one may judge by election returns). Mr. Himmelfarb’s solution to the dilemma is to do what he rightly condemns in others—blame the Jews. He sees American Jews as stubbornly persisting in an obsolete allegiance to the Democratic party, and to its liberal wing in particular. He acknowledges that most Jews did not vote for Jesse Jackson, yet suggests that they are helping Jackson by voting Democratic. Against these assertions, the following may be said:

  1. Just where is the evidence that Jesse Jackson would have exerted influence on Dukakis’s Middle East policy? To me, one of the most striking things about the entire 1988 campaign was how little real power Dukakis conceded to Jackson. None of Jackson’s platform planks was accepted by the Democratic convention (the one calling for a Palestinian state never even came up for a vote). Dukakis’s choice for Vice President was hardly to Jackson’s liking, and (whether deliberately or not) Dukakis did not even inform Jackson of the choice. In his acceptance speech, Dukakis devoted far more praise to Jackson’s children than to their father! Such concessions as Dukakis made to Jackson were very minor and symbolic in nature—e.g., giving him an evening to address the convention, or giving Jackson’s allies greater representation on the far-from-powerful Democratic National Committee. And even as conservative an observer as Fred Barnes has conceded (in the American Spectator) that Jackson played a very subordinate role in the autumn campaign. In fact, Louis Farrakhan supported the small New Alliance party because, he said, Dukakis was snubbing Jackson.
  2. If stemming the influence of Jesse Jackson is the main task, one can argue that voting Democratic was the best way to do so. (Mr. Himmelfarb argues that it was obvious by election day that Dukakis could not win, but in fact he came very close in major state after major state.) Extremists generally have more influence in parties that are out of power, especially ones that have been out of power for a long time. It could be argued that Dukakis-Bentsen was the last chance for a relatively moderate Democratic administration, and that Jackson’s influence will increase in the party precisely because of Dukakis’s loss. I do not necessarily agree with this—I think that the chances of a centrist Democrat being nominated in 1992 are better than some people believe—but it is not an unreasonable argument. . . .
  3. Maybe Jews were justified in paying more attention to Dukakis’s Middle East views than to Jackson’s. In fact, Dukakis specifically stated that he would not support the creation of a Palestinian state unless all the parties involved, including Israel, agreed to it. And Dukakis’s opponent, after all, had a background in the Texas oil industry, not exactly known as a philo-Semitic or pro-Israel stronghold.
  4. Suppose Dukakis had been elected, and then announced that the U.S. was starting a dialogue with the PLO. Suppose he then appointed as his chief of staff an Arab-American who had been the only governor who voted not to condemn the notorious UN resolution equating Zionism with racism. No doubt Mr. Himmelfarb . . . would have seized upon this as “proof” that Jackson dominated the Democrats, and that Jews were foolish not to vote Republican. One hopes (but doubts) that Jewish neoconservatives will now question their assumption that a conservative administration is more likely to be pro-Israel than a liberal one.

Leaving aside specifically “Jewish” issues, does it never occur to Mr. Himmelfarb that perhaps sometimes the majority of Jews are right and the majority of Gentiles wrong? In view of such problems as the budget and trade deficits, the environment, and the persistence of poverty in a time of economic expansion, maybe it is the decision of the majority of Gentiles to vote for Bush that needs explaining, not that of the majority of Jews to support Dukakis.

Despite my criticisms of Mr. Himmelfarb, I do wish to congratulate him for at least admitting the persistence of liberal leanings among the Jews. . . .

Steven D. Rennet
Chicago, Illinois

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To the Editor:

. . . Since the Civil War, the Republican party has functioned as a coalition of insiders and the Democratic party as a coalition of outsiders. The fundamental difference between the two parties is that the Democrats have always been more receptive to outsiders—be they America’s dispossessed or newly-arrived immigrants. For most voters, the specific issues at any given time are less important than this underlying difference.

Most Republicans I know are unhappy, not only about blacks and Hispanics, but even about the current wave of Asian immigrants. . . . Their ideal America would be an exclusionary country club. Although they are now willing to welcome Jews to that country club, most Jews regard an invitation based on these concepts with more than a few misgivings.

COMMENTARY would seem to believe that the antagonistic attitude of black political leaders is so serious a matter that Jews should join the country club to protect themselves from the barbarians at the gate. I am not sure that the rest of us see black anti-Semitism as quite so serious a problem.

Most blacks do not hate Jews; what they hate is whites. They will continue to hate whites for another century at least—in the same way that the ethnic nationalities of the Soviet Union will continue to hate the Great Russians, and just about everyone who has been subject to the Turkish empire hates the Turks. Thus are the sins of the fathers visited upon the children. Because they hate whites, black intellectuals are prone to regard themselves as a Third-World people, which encourages them to support the Arab cause. . . .

I would very much prefer to see more blacks take the same stand against black racists that they want us to take against white racists. But I do not view a policy of exclusion as the best way to solve the problem.

William A. Baker
New York City

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To the Editor:

Milton Himmelfarb makes Jesse Jackson the single issue on which Jews should vote in a presidential election. I think I am representative of many Jews who cannot bring themselves to vote Republican for a variety of reasons, but who also feel that black anti-Semitism is not going to change no matter what happens in presidential elections. . . .

L. Seligsberger
Newton, Massachusetts

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To the Editor:

. . . Mr. Himmelfarb writes that “During the primaries every candidate for the Democratic nomination had attacked every other candidate—except Jackson.” But this was merely because all the candidates felt there was no point in attacking a man who posed no real threat and whose supporters might be offended and stay home in November. Similarly, none of the candidates of the party preferred by . . . Mr. Himmelfarb said anything derogatory about the Reverend Pat Robertson.

David Karol
Highland Park, Illinois

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To the Editor:

Milton Himmelfarb’s belittlement of the Jewish voter who blindly ignores the alleged anti-Semitic trends in the Democratic party comes ill to one who voted Republican because of this and now finds himself confronted with a President who blatantly—and unprecedentedly—adopts the Arab line against Israeli “occupation” and for “Palestinian rights.”

The question that Jews with their liberal proclivities (who know all too well what it is to live in an illiberal world) face is: what is more perilous, the adoption by the United States of a position in support of the Arabs against Israel or the influence of Jesse Jackson in the Democratic party? I say the former, and aver that my Republican vote in the last election was an error.

Frederic Wile
New York City

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To the Editor:

. . . Milton Himmelfarb should address a fascinating question: how is it that the Orthodox are apparently the only Jewish group able to sense a clear threat to basic Jewish survival? And how is it that the Jews with the least Jewish education and Jewish commitment continue blindly in their habits of voting Democratic despite the shadows of Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan?

Clearly, assimilationist tendencies continue in force among the Jews even when these tendencies are obviously self-destructive. Not only does the secular, liberal American Jew find no threat to Judaism in assimilationist manifestations like intermarriage; amazingly enough, he also sees no threat to himself from open anti-Semitism. . . .

[Rabbi] Emanuel Feldman
Atlanta, Georgia

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To the Editor:

In a letter to COMMENTARY written four years ago I suggested, somewhat obliquely, that American Jewish voting patterns owed more to sharply divided Jewish religious perceptions than to differing political appraisals arising out of a common underlying perspective. Nothing has changed my mind since then. Milton Himmelfarb’s research suggests that the gap between religious Jews (who vote overwhelmingly Republican in presidential elections) and the secular majority (who vote overwhelmingly Democratic) has simply become more institutionalized. . . .

As Mr. Himmelfarb and others have noted, religious Jews inhabit a world largely independent of secular political loyalties. Votes are determined in major degree by pragmatic considerations. . . .

The secular, by contrast, have adopted the civic religion (or their version of it) as their own. When Mr. Himmelfarb asks secular Jews to vote Republican for the narrow purpose of teaching the Democrats a lesson, he is asking them to do more than switch sides in a political game, albeit a serious one. He is asking them to apostatize. . . . Obviously at stake are powerful emotional ties, far transcending any worldly reality. Voting Democratic, for many Jews, is literally an act of faith.

Will anything alter this intense affiliation among the secular? I doubt it. It is not enough for liberal programs to fail or be abandoned. The Democrats would have to cease even to espouse liberal ideals. Even then, few secular Jews would switch to a Republican party which seems to derive most of its gusto from a populist-religious hard core and is otherwise essentially the same motley crew that nearly disappeared during the mid-70’s. . . .

Seth A. Halpern
Scarsdale, New York

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Milton Himmelfarb writes:

It is not necessarily a compliment if someone calls you clever. Aristophanes is not complimenting Socrates when he has him cleverly making Unjust prevail over Just Logos, and for Milton it is Belial who “could make the worse appear/the better reason.” The rabbinical tradition is a little kinder to cleverness, but only a little. The cleverness that goes with juridical keenness, a virtue for the rabbis of the Talmud and their successors, can spill over into frivolity, a vice. Sanhedrin (17a): “Only such a person may be appointed to the Sanhedrin as would be able to appeal to the authority of the Torah for asserting the cleanness of reptiles [which the Torah explicitly declares unclean]”; but ‘Eruvin (13b): “In Rabbi Me’ir’s generation he had no peer. Why then were his legal opinions not always accepted? His colleagues could never be sure of his true intent when he argued plausibly for declaring the unclean clean and the clean unclean.” In Yiddish, “pig’s foot—kosher” is disapproving.

Too many American Jews want to believe that a pig’s foot is kosher.

Remember the numbers. In a survey of Jewish opinion last year that asked whether Jesse Jackson was anti-Semitic, 56 percent answered yes, 33 percent were not sure, and only 11 percent answered no. Then, asked which party they would probably vote for if Jackson were the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, 44 percent answered that they would probably vote Republican, 25 percent that they would probably vote Democratic, 30 percent that they did not know how they would vote, and 2 percent that they probably would not vote.

In short, a huge majority say that Jackson is or may be an anti-Semite, and a majority also say that they will or may vote for him for Vice President. They know about the one heartbeat separating vice presidency from presidency.

Imagine a survey of black opinion and a hypothetical Jesse Jillson, a white as widely distrusted by blacks as Jesse Jackson is by Jews. (Jillson is a loyal friend to the anti-black demagogue Louis Kharrafan.) Asked whether Jillson is a racist, nearly all blacks say he is or may be. Will most also say that they will or may vote Democratic if the Democratic party nominates him for Vice President? Of course they won’t.

And so for any other predominantly Democratic group if the Democratic party nominates for Vice President anyone who repels its members. Only Jews are clever enough to persuade themselves that because the Democratic party nominates an enemy as potential President, they should try to elect him.

Now imagine that a general survey of American opinion asks those questions about a hypothetical Jesse Johnson and that the percentages come out the same. Each and every American Jewish union, conference, committee, league, congress, institute, and advisory council will reach a common conclusion: “Too many Gentiles will vote for a candidate even though they think he’s an anti-Semite. They themselves need not be anti-Semitic. Most are probably non-anti-Semitic. We have to help them understand that non-anti-Semitism isn’t enough. Nothing less than anti-anti-Semitism will do.”

Since it was merely Jews who gave those non-anti-Semitic responses, the American Jewish unions, conferences, committees, leagues, congresses, institutes, and advisory councils have been uncharacteristically silent. Not a word to admonish Jews that Jewish non-anti-Semitism isn’t enough, either. If anything is said at all, it recalls the verse repeated in Jeremiah (6:14 followed by 8:11): “They treat with unconcern My wounded people, assuring them, ‘All is well, all is well,’ when all is not well.”

My old friend Hyman Bookbinder, good Democrat that he is, thinks all is well. I reported that in the Democratic primaries unspecified “liberals” gave illiberal Jackson fully 41 percent of their votes nationwide (50 percent in California!), while Jewish voters gave him only 8 percent nationwide (14 percent in California). Doesn’t that show how sensible Jewish voters are? Why am I wringing my hands?

But nobody ever said that Jews prefer Jackson. In the primaries they could vote for other Democrats. In the opinion survey they had no choice. Before the survey was mailed out, the newspapers and the television talk shows had speculated that the Democratic convention might offer Jackson its nomination for Vice President and that he might accept. Hence the question: “If Jackson is the Democratic vice-presidential candidate . . . ?” The majority answered that in that case they would or might vote for Jackson. That is not my idea of sensible.

It is outdated campaign rhetoric to keep professing horror at some Baltic nobodies who were in Bush’s nationalities division until they were exposed and fired. I call Jackson the loyal friend of Farrakhan because even the few Jews who deny that Jackson is an anti-Semite might find it hard to deny that Farrakhan is.

My last favorite Jewish politician was David Ben-Gurion. Mayor Koch says he voted for Dukakis. In his circumstances, what else could a Democratic politician say?

Jews like to believe they vote on the issues. Issues can be the good reasons of the educated rather than their true reasons. In 1984 a distinguished political scientist told me that his brother, a distinguished economist, liked Reagan’s economic platform better than Mondale’s but voted for Mondale. He had watched the Republican convention, and they didn’t look like his kind of people.

Many Jews think of the Republican party as the enemy camp but three of the eight Jewish Senators are Republicans, two of them from states where Jews are less than 1 percent of the population.

In 1984 everyone agreed that Reagan had been more pro-Israel than any of his predecessors. Jews responded by giving him, almost uniquely, fewer votes than in 1980. Reagan’s second term was as pro-Israel as the first. Jews responded by giving Bush equally few votes. Jews are too high-minded to reward friends.

They also think that unrequited favors should not stop coming. When Sununu was named the President’s chief of staff, a leader of a conspicuously liberal Jewish union or congress had the nerve to warn that Jewish voters would thenceforth think twice about voting Republican!

McGovern’s followers won control of the Democratic party in 1972 after they had assured Humphrey’s defeat in 1968, either by playing hooky from the voting booth or by actually voting for Nixon. Boies Penrose, a Republican, formulated the regnant principle: if you have to choose between losing an election and losing control of your party, lose the election. So even strong Democrats should not have voted Democratic this time, especially since the election would have been lost regardless.

The socialist or revolutionary faith of the spiritual ancestors of most Left-of-Center, secularist Jews has been thinned down to what in America is called liberalism. Some of them are frank to characterize their tradition as secular messianism, implying that a religious Jew has less need of a substitute religion. Still under the spell of Voltaire’s écrasez l’infâme, they shudder at the thought of religion—any religion—or of a morality rooted in religion affecting public life. An exception must be noted: black religion doesn’t come under the interdict, whether in the person of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King or of the Reverend Jesse Jackson.

It is said that Prime Minister Thatcher’s favorite bishop is the Chief Rabbi of England, for whom she arranged the title of nobility so that there would be one prelate in the House of Lords whom she could stand.

Although Jews typically favor a welfare state more than others with comparable occupations, incomes, and so on, Jews do not have a distinctive economic interest in such a state. If we must speak of interest, let us say that the Jewish interest is less a material than a psychic one.

Is there perhaps something that borders on racism in the readiness of so many to hint, or even to say aloud, that because Jesse Jackson is black his threat is not to be taken seriously?

Finally, consider a paradox in the American Jewish discussion of the politics of American Jews. Universalist or non-parochial Jews may be expected to stand politically to the Left of particularist or parochial Jews, and Jewish self-satisfaction and self-gratulation may be expected to go with particularism. But the hurrahs we hear these days are liberal Jews’ hurrahs for Jewish liberalism, idealism, and unselfishness. You can almost hear them sighing, “If only everybody were like us!”

This is parochial—doubly parochial. Now it is not only that American Jews vote more liberal than American non-Jews. Now they vote more liberal than non-American Jews. Twenty-five years ago British Jews were even more “liberal” than American Jews, fully 95 percent of the Jewish MP’s belonging to the Labor party. In a massive reversal, today 70 percent are Conservatives. The new American Jewish exceptionalism is one reason why I said that I know American Jews but am no longer sure I understand them.

A second reason is that when friends or relatives have done something particularly imprudent, particularly silly-clever, people say, “I don’t understand you.”

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