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Milton Himmelfarb, essayist and thinker, once famously quipped, “Jews earn like Episcopalians, and vote like Puerto Ricans”. There’s some truth to this, and that’s why it prompts a laugh even from liberals. However, what is this about? As the midterm elections approach, it’s worth contemplating why a resounding majority of us vote Democrat, almost reflexively. Jewish memory is responsible for the Jewish vote. Jews know what it is to be an outsider, and we know what it means when the town you live in turns on you, and would deprive your children of food or life because of your difference from the majority. We identify not with the overseers but with the slaves, not only because we were once slaves in Egypt, but also because we are, and will remain, a small vulnerable minority.
The explanation for our unseemly voting for the Democratic candidate lies not in our shopping habits or ZIP codes, but rather deep in our culture. We aren’t convinced that the poor deserve their fate. Our tradition teaches us to forgive debts in a scheduled way, and to leave enough at the margins of our fields so those without a harvest of their own can survive. Therefore, it’s hard for Jews to vote for a political party that suggests that if you don’t have medical care, it’s your own fault, and if you don’t have retirement funds, you’ve been guilty of sloth or stupidity and other sins that will do you in just as you deserve.
Many Jews went South in the early days of the civil rights movement, not because they faced lynching or restriction from lunch counters, but because Jews knew about restriction, prejudice, the calumny of the poisoned well, and the blood libels of Easter massacres. When the second or third generation of Jews learned that America accepted them, but rejected others, they understood in their deepest selves the insult and the pain that it brings. It was an old insult echoing the pogroms, yellow stars, and dunce hats of another place, as old as the Vienna ghetto and as recent as the “No Jews Need Apply” sign on the factory door, or the “No Jews” sign on the hotel lawn.
Nevertheless, what is it about Jewish memory that seems so long-lived, so unshakable? Our memory is our survival tool… a parachute that lands us safely on one continent or another. It’s part of all the forms of Judaism, and survives even in secular Jews, vivid, demanding, insisting on connections that go back centuries. You can avoid synagogue all that you like, but you still know the reason for the Seder, you still know that David was King, and that the crusaders murdered Jews along their route to the Holy Land. Jews know that exile, whether from Jerusalem to Babylon, from Madrid to Amsterdam, or England to Vienna, was their fate, and they told all those stories, mystical or factual, painful or shameful, generation to generation… in each telling, these memories carried a message to the future. This message places each Jewish child at some risk of life and limb, but also gives each Jewish child a collective story to carry into his or her own place in the world. That story leads to gratitude for the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, for the (not-so-sincere) pluralism of the founding fathers, whom Jews adopted as their own. Jewish political morals are about community, protection of the vulnerable, and the hardship of being a minority amongst a majority of others.
The differences between Democrats and Republicans lie in their basic assumptions about people. Democrats look at social and economic circumstances and want to improve schools and opportunity and offer child care or food stamps to those in need. Republicans look at those same circumstances and blame the poor; they want to guard the rewards of society for those deemed worthy because they already have these goods. This is the old Protestant ethic that sees proof of God’s love in one’s wealth… damning those who don’t manage to make it in the same way.
The Jewish neoconservatives are as American as hot dogs on the Fourth of July, but they wear shoes that will always pinch like Cinderella’s slipper on the foot of the wicked stepsister. Republicans think of military solutions when threatened. Democrats, at least some of them, think of allies, negotiations, and solutions that might end threats to all. The Democratic idea isn’t to grab your gun, but to sit down and talk (yes, yes, Vietnam, alas). Jews are good at talking. In the great rabbinic battle, Shammai didn’t take a knife and pierce Hillel’s aorta. If he had, we might be more eager to rush to the ramparts and release our drones. Republicans are for manning our borders with militias and for protecting our country from those wandering across deserts, in search of a better life. Jews are on the side of the wanderers.
Hence, of course, most Jews still vote Democratic, and will for the foreseeable future. It isn’t about our private bank accounts or our children who now have legacy admission advantages in the best universities across the land: It’s about the core of the community, the memory of the community, about the deep identification with those without power, those hungry and at the hard edge of American life. We may play golf and drive Mercedes-Benzes, or at least some of us may, but we all know how easy it is for the Jewish family to become the prey in a nasty Hobbesian world where compassion is in short supply. Then, there are the social issues. Jews… we aren’t all the same… aren’t necessarily more tolerant of private sexual behaviours than others are, but we have a stake in protecting the private from government intervention. That doesn’t mean that all Jews are especially pleased with same-sex marriage or abortion rights or the right to die when ill, or to smoke pot, or to have sex outside marriage, but when it comes to private behaviour, they understand that government, with its majority voice, needs to be very cautious when dealing with people’s personal choices… sexual, financial, religious.
There is a levee here that has to hold if Jews can be comfortable in a pluralistic America, and Democrats are ready to pile on the sandbags, whereas Republicans are the river itself coming to drown us in their own vision of the moral life. Consequently, Jews will vote blue again this November and for the foreseeable future. The official mascot of the Democratic Party is the donkey, but Jewish Democrats are more like elephants… we don’t forget.
24 October 2014
Anne Roiphe
The Jewish Daily Forward
http://forward.com/articles/207855/why-jews-will-vote-democrat-again/
Editor:
If you vote Republican, you vote for pigs that kicked Dede and Baba in the face for the sake of profit. If you vote Republican, you vote for pigs who hated and hate our separate culture and civilisation. If you vote Republican, you vote for pigs who believe that Anglo Americans are special, and that everyone else has the duty and obligation to kiss their collective ass constantly and without let-up. If you vote Republican, you repudiate His Holiness and all those who agree with him. If you vote Republican, you repudiate timeless Orthodox Truth and embrace expedient Evangelical heresy for the entire world to see. If you vote Republican, you repudiate Almighty God and bow down before the Almighty Dollar (For no man can have two masters).
Russian Orthodox people are like Jews… we’re a small minority in the USA and Canada, and will remain such. We should remember who and what we are… we are NOT Republican oppressors and aggressors. The konvertsy should take heed of that, change their tune, or leave us… that’s only truthful. The First Century equivalents of Republicans crucified Our Lord Christ… is that what you want? You can stand for Caiaphas or you can stand for Christ… if you vote Republican, you don’t stand for Christ and that’s that. What concord hath Christ with Belial? What concord hath Orthodox Christians with Radical Sectarians?
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition… remember Baba and Dede… don’t vote Republican… it’s the Luciferian choice!
BMD
Voices from Russia 
18 October 2018. I Wrote This Four Years Ago… It’s Truer Today Than It Was Then
Tags: 2018 US mid-term election, elections, extreme right, Far-right politics, GOP, political commentary, politics, Republican, Republican Party, Republican Party (United States), Republicans, right-wing, Right-wing politics, United States, US elections, US Republican Party, USA, wingnuts
This is from six years ago… and it still has tread, too. Bain Capital loaded up Toys r’ Us with debt and looted the store before it folded. Trump & Co chortle at this and applaud it. Vote against the Republican Party, for your very life depends on it.
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Editor:
With Trump & Co loudly calling for cuts to Social Security to finance giveaways to the deadbeat Affluent Effluent, what I wrote four years ago has more resonance today than it did then. The Republicans hate you and wish to rape you for the benefit of their rich paymasters. The Democrats hate you as well, and love the rich just as much, but they’ll leave us with more than what the Repugs would. Ordinary people have no option this year. As bad as the Dems are (and they ARE filthy promoters of neoliberal crapitalism), they’re better than the GOP, who’d leave us with nothing.
BMD
With all the chest-beating on the part of the American rightwing… let’s utter a home truth. American cosmonauts have to fly Russian spacecraft to the ISS as the reckless Republican filth wasted the USA’s treasure in useless land wars in Asia that didn’t advance the cause of national defence one iota and on gigantic tax cuts to corporations and to lazy wealthy scummers. That’s a fact, jack…
If you vote for the Republican Party, you vote for anti-patriotism (exporting jobs abroad and nominating cowards who refused to do military service), you vote for anti-life programmes (gutting the social safety net that unwed moms need to raise kids instead of having abortions), and you vote for Might Makes Right (bullying smaller countries and handing the country over to the Country Club Affluent Effluent Set). If you vote against them, you just might have Americans flying American spacecraft again. After all, the money for warmongering and coddling the rich has to come from somewhere…
IT COMES FROM YOU… IT COMES FROM YOUR KIDS… AND THEY DON’T GIVE A GOOD RUBY-RED GODDAMN.
Vote against the Republican scummers… God will bless you for it (and so will His Holiness… he’s a Red, and don’t you forget it!)…
BMD