A Very Large Percentage Of American Jews Are Smart And Humane-- And Don't Vote For Republicans

A ballroom filled with aggressively right-wing Jews with "Make America Great Again" yarmulkas on, cheering loudly when America's very own would-be Hitler oozed how he would turn away refugees was horribly sickening to me. Most of my blood relatives are in Recife, Belém and Salvador in Brazil because, the U.S. turned them away as undesirables when they were fleeing for their lives from Czarist persecution. I wonder if pre-1932 Germany had anything like the Adelson Kapo Klub Konclave where Jews sat around cheering anti-Communism and law and order with yarmulkas embroidered with swastikas.

The interests of American Jews have long been allied with the Democratic Party. When the country was going all in for the corruption, narrow-minded bigotry and greed of the roaring twenties, Jewish voters were having done of it. Jews gave Warren G. Harding just 43% of their votes, splitting the rets between Socialist Eugene Debs (38%) and Democrat James Cox (19%). Almost all presidential candidates after Cox have gotten over 60% of the Jewish vote, exceptions being Jimmy Carter who still took a plurality in the 1980 three-way race and Mondale who only got 57% in his ill-fated attempt to prevent Reagan's reelection. The habit of Jewish voters giving landslide margins to Democrats began in a serious way in 1928 when Jews were among the first to recognize where Republican policies were taking the country. Jewish voters were all in for Al Smith (72%) against Herbert Hoover (28%) even before the Crash. And even Jewish Republican voters abandoned Hoover, whose share dropped from 28% to 18% when Roosevelt first ran. Jews gave Roosevelt 82% of their vote in 1932. That grew to 85% in 1936 and 90% in 1940 and 1944. That 90% of anti-Republicans didn't disappear with FDR. In 1948, Dewey (R) got 10% and Jews split their votes between Truman (75%) and the Progressive candidate, Henry Wallace (15%).

But America liked Ike and many Jewish voters did too, giving Adlai Stevenson just 64% in 1952 and 60% in 1956. After that, Jewish Americans have continued to support the Democrats ever since:

• 1960- Kennedy (82%), Nixon (18%)
• 1964- LBJ (90%), Goldwater (10%)
• 1968- Humphrey (81%), Nixon (17%)
• 1972- McGovern (65%), Nixon (35%)
• 1976- Carter (71%), Ford (27%)
• 1980- Carter (45%), Reagan (39%), Anderson (15%)
• 1984- Mondale- (57%), Reagan (31%)
• 1988- Dukakis- (64%), Bush (35%)
• 1992- Clinton (80%), Bush (11%), Perot (9%)
• 1996- Clinton (78%), Dole (16%)
• 2000- Gore (79%), Bush (19%)
• 2004- Kerry (76%), Bush (24%)
• 2008- Obama (78%), McCain (22%)
• 2012- Obama (69%), Romney (30%)
• 2016- Hillary (71%), Trumpanzee (24%)

None of that has prevented Republicans, over and over and over from trying to woo Jewish voters. But George H.W. Bush's 35% was a highhmark in recent years. In 2016, Trump tried too but only managed 24%, six points less than Romney got 4 years earlier. In 2020, Trump is going for it again-- and in a big way. Mob-affiliated far-right Israeli citizen Sheldon Adelson will help bankroll a ten-million dollar effort to persuade American Jews that fascism isn't as bad as they think it is.

Although the Kapos say they're "at the intersection of a very unique moment in time," this is basically what they say every four years-- and then, as you can see above, fail miserably.

This time they think because Trump openly supports the right-wing Likud agenda-- most American Jews don't-- the GOP will be rewarded with Jewish votes. Alex Isenstadt wrote that "At a time when Trump’s approval rating remains mired in the low-to-mid 40s, the offensive shows how Republicans are taking steps to contest any votes they can. Jews only account for about 2 percent of the U.S. population and have overwhelmingly supported Democrats in past elections. But GOP officials believe that siphoning off even a small portion the Jewish vote in a few battleground states could be critical in 2020. 'The Jewish vote will remain and largely loyal Democratic vote because of domestic issues largely, but if there was ever a cycle where Republicans could make inroads it is this cycle,' said Ari Fleischer, a former George W. Bush White House press secretary who now serves as an RJC board member. 'If you accept that there are sizeable Jewish populations in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, [and] Michigan, the Jewish vote-- if we can make additional inroads-- can be very helpful in putting you over the top. The White House knows that.' The administration is going all-in on the strategy. On Saturday, Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and three White House officials-- Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt, and Avi Berkowitz-- all made pilgrimages to the Venetian, where RJC (AKA- Adelson's Kapo Klub Konclave) members were gathered for the third day of their annual spring conference. Before a sea of supporters waving 'We are Jews for Trump' signs, the president accused Democrats of opposing Israel and 'advancing by far the most extreme, anti-Semitic agenda in history.'" Most Jews aren't poorly educated morons and they don't fall for Trump's ugly gaslighting. They know a fascist slob when they hear him.

Where do Jews live? Not in states Trump is likely to win. These are the states with over a quarter million Jews and each state's PVI:

• New York- 1,768,770 (8.9%)- D+12
• California- 1,182,990 (3.0%)- D+12
• Florida- 629,120 (3.0%)- R+2
• New Jersey- 545,450 (6.1%)- D+7
• Pennsylvania- 298,240 (2.3%)- [even]
• Illinois- 298,035 (2.3%)- D+7
• Massachusetts- 293,080 (4.3%)- D+12

The only other states where Jews make up over 2% of the population are Connecticut (D+6), Maryland (D+12) and Nevada (D+1).

The Jewish voters who have been most susceptible to Republican messaging are right-wing Russian immigrants and Hassidics who basically vote the way their rabbis tell them to. These Jews are already part of the 24% of Jews that backed Trump in 2016 and, with the exception of Pennsylvania, where a sizable community of right-wing Russians have settled-- they're primarily is blue states where they won't have a serious impact on the outcomes.

Prior to taking the stage, Trump met privately with Adelson and his wife, Miriam, who together gave over $120 million to Republican causes during the 2018 midterms. The 85-year-old Adelson, who’s been undergoing cancer treatment, hadn’t been expected to be in attendance. But those close to the billionaire said he was intent on making the Trump rally, and when he entered the auditorium on a motorized scooter and wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat, he was greeted with a standing ovation.

Democrats are deeply skeptical that the GOP will succeed in making inroads with Jews. Since 1992, according to exit polling data, the Jewish vote has remained remarkably stable, with Democrats winning between 69 percent and 79 percent in each presidential election.

Halie Soifer, the executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said that recent polling her group had conducted showed that Jews remained confident in the Democratic Party’s posture on Israel and that they overwhelmingly disagreed with Trump on an array of domestic issues. And, she pointed out, Republicans had long vowed to make gains with Jewish voters only to fall short.

“This is not new. We’ve seen different iterations of this in previous elections either in midterm or presidential elections, and each time it’s kind of repackaged with a different narrative in an attempt by Republicans to chip away at the Jewish vote-- and every time it fails,” Soifer said. “And while the repackaging might make it look like there are different reasons behind it-- and certainly we are in a slightly different political context today than we have been in the past-- the result is the same.”

...To some Republicans, highlighting issues surrounding Israel and anti-Semitism goes beyond simply appealing to the Jewish vote. Among those making the rounds at the Venetian this week was Dan Conston, who, as the president of American Action Network and Congressional Leadership Fund, the main pro-House GOP outside groups, has been arguing to major donors that portraying Democrats as unwilling to confront anti-Semitic forces in their party will help to boost Republicans with the suburban voters who abandoned them in 2018.

Ahead of this week’s conference, the group released digital advertisements tying swing-district House Democrats to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who has come under fire for using tropes widely viewed as anti-Semitic. While some senior Democrats have rebuked Omar, she has retained her seat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“It's appalling that Democrats have stood by and tolerated openly anti-Semitic commentary from their own members,” Conston said. “If Democrats continue to stand by and do nothing, we think suburban voters across America will find it similarly appalling next election.”

That Jewish Republicans have emerged as outspoken champions of Trump’s reelection bid represents something of a turnabout. The RJC was torn over the president during the tumultuous opening days of his tenure, and broke with Trump over his handling of the violence in Charlottesville, when he equated white supremacists with counter-protesters.

Yet many key Jewish Republicans are now firmly in the president’s corner. That includes Fred Zeidman, a longtime GOP giver [and notorious Kapo] who chairs a New York City-based investment banking firm. Zeidman, who backed Jeb Bush in the 2016 GOP primary, initially harbored concerns about Trump’s position on Israel and was rankled by the White House’s failure to mention Jews in its January 2017 statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

But Zeidman, who met with Trump early in his White House tenure to discuss Israel, said he no longer had any doubts about Trump. The president, he said, had been “incomparable” in terms of “how good he’s been to Israel.”

Zeidman, who helped to oversee Jewish outreach on the George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney presidential campaigns, recalled a recent conversation with Houston oilman Harold Hamm. During the Bush years, Zeidman told Hamm, he had a T-shirt quoting the late Israeli leader Shimon Peres as saying that “George W. Bush is the greatest president Israel has ever had.”

“I had,” Zeidman told the billionaire oilman, “to tear up my T-shirt.”

There are now 3.45 million Muslims living in the U.S. If the aggressive Republican Party outreach to Jewish voters this cycle is based on bigotry towards Muslims, that is not just certain to turn off many Jews, and it will super-charge Muslim voter participation in parts on Michigan, Texas, Florida, Virginia, Iowa, Pennsylvania and even Arkansas where they are large Muslim communities. And, by the way, if you're interested in helping with Ilhan Omar's (D-MN), reelection efforts against Trump and the Islamophobic bigots working overtime in their efforts to dehumanize her, you can click on the Blue America "Worthy Incumbents" thermometer on the right. There you will find the incumbents in the House who are doing the heavily lifting for the progressive agenda right now. No one needs the help more than Ilhan. Please consider contributing what you can to her campaign and to the campaigns of any of the other members who you feel have been doing an exceptionally good job this year.