3 min read
ByJonathan Freedland, Jonathan Freedland
'Israel is no longer — if it ever truly was — the determinant of US Jews’ voting preferences.'
November 5, 2020 16:22You’ve got an advantage over me. As you read this, you might well know what I don’t: namely, the name of the next president of the United States. As I write this, there’s still a haze of uncertainty as key states take their time counting the votes.
Still, even now, through the fog, three distinct facts are visible. The first is that, yet again, the Democrats have won the popular vote —for the seventh time in the last eight presidential elections. The Republicans have won it only once this century (in 2004). The second is that, yet again, the pollsters messed up. All those surveys showing Biden with chunky leads in Florida or North Carolina or Texas were wrong, as were those showing him winning by a mile, rather than by a possible whisker, in the key states of the upper Midwest. And the third is that, yet again, America’s Jews voted Democrat.
It’s almost reassuring. In a turbulent, volatile world there is at least one thing that is constant, unchanging and dependable. An exit poll conducted by GBAO Strategies for J Street —the group that describes itself as “the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans” — found that 77 percent of American Jews backed Joe Biden while a mere 21 percent opted for Donald Trump.
That 56-point margin was even heftier than the 45-point advantage among Jews Hillary Clinton had over Trump four years ago. It means that, after African-Americans, Jews are the single most reliable ethnic group for the Democrats. If you prefer to put Jews in a different category, there is no religious group more faithful to any party than Jews are to Democrats: in 2016, 58 percent of Protestants and 52 percent of Catholics went for Trump, and it’s clear that white, born-again evangelicals love him — but the Jewish number remains out on its own.
Why might that be? The reflex response to questions about Jewish voting habits used to be: Israel. I remember speaking to Jewish voters in Skokie, just outside Chicago, in the first US election I covered back in 1992. They were not keen on George Bush the elder, because they didn’t like the way he had withheld $10bn in loan guarantees from Israel over the issue of West Bank settlements. Some were wary of Bill Clinton, fearing that, as a Christian governor of a southern state, he might be “another Jimmy Carter” — in other words, a critic of Israel.
Things have moved on a bit since then. If a hawkish position on Israel was all it took to win Jewish support, Trump would have done much better than he did: after all, it was he who moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, he who presided at a White House ceremony in September to sign the “Abraham Accords” between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
And yet, that clearly didn’t cut much ice with Jewish voters. Part of the explanation might be that Biden has some serious pro-Israel credentials of his own, burnished over a half-century career in Washington. But mainly it’s because Israel is no longer — if it ever truly was — the determinant of US Jews’ voting preferences.
Instead, Jewish Americans tend to be overwhelmingly liberal on the big social issues of the day — whether it’s civil rights or healthcare — and the Democrats are the obvious fit. The exception to that are Orthodox and Strictly Orthodox Jews, who tend to be more conservative and will have made up a big chunk of that 21 percent who backed Trump.
But I suspect there’s something deeper at work, peculiar to Donald Trump. Recall that this is the president who praised the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who marched through Charlottesville in 2017, chanting “Jews will not replace us,” as including some “very fine people.” The president who cast George Soros as the evil mastermind behind the so-called “caravan of migrants” that headed to the US border from Central America. That he was once heard in the White House, according to the Washington Post, muttering that “Jews are only in it for themselves” and “stick together,” putting a clannish loyalty to each other above all other allegiances. Joe Biden may have a long track record of gaffes, but none of them sound like that.
Still, I suspect the Jewish antipathy to Trump goes beyond the awful things he has said about Jews. It will be a response simply to the man he is: a nationalist and demagogue, one who has repeatedly torn at the guardrails that ensure a democracy stays on track. He did it again in the early hours of Wednesday morning, when he falsely and dangerously declared that he had won the election before all the votes had been counted. Jews know a thing or two about such men — and the havoc they can wreak.
So of course they voted in huge numbers against him. America may not have given Trump the crushing defeat he merited — but I’m glad that America’s Jews repudiated him utterly. They could do no other.
Jonathan Freedland is a columnist for the Guardian
