Why do people care about the Jewish vote?
Here’s commenter “Niketas Choniates” on the recent thread about the Jews of NYC not voting for Mamdani:
Probably this is because it’s a primary and only a small percentage of people voted at all.
If anyone is still paying attention at the time, we will learn the true answer after the election for mayor, presuming that someone bothers to poll NYC Jews to find out how they voted.
The votes of Jews, however, except in a few cities, are electorally negligible, there are not many of them to begin with and overwhelmingly concentrated in deep-blue cities. Chasing their votes seems to be to be outdated thinking, as there are other minority blocs that are larger and in places that matter more.
Pew estimated in 2020 about 6 million Jews in the US, 1.5 million of whom say they are not religious. They say a lot more than that of course because of the “who counts” issue.
This website has a different number but breaks down by metro area. New York, Los Angeles, and Miami account for just under half of the total. DC, Philadephia, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, and Detroit account for another quarter, which leaves something like 2 million more scattered across the country.
Jews in America are comparable in size to Chinese Americans and Indian Americans, each at about 5.5 million. It seems hardly anyone spends as much time talking about what Chinese and Indian Americans are going to think, as they spend talking about what Jews are going to think. Especially with Indians I think this a huge mistake, considering where Indians tend to concentrate in the economy. There are increasingly more Indians in C suites and in national office.
Of course Mexican Americans and Black Americans represent far larger shares of the population, each near 12% of the total population. There’s also a lot of outdated thinking on who Mexican Americans actually are and what is likely to appeal to them, but I bet some party is spending bezillions to try to figure it out, either now or very soon. It would be effort much better spent than worrying about if American Jews want to vote for socialist Democrats or not.
Good points. And yet people do seem to care more about how Jews vote for several reasons. One is Jew-hatred by those who like to blame them. As I said in my post, I often see comments on the right that say something like, “I’ll start caring about Jew-hating when the Jews stop voting for Democrats.” It’s the same with Israel – much of the world cares disproportionately about Israel because a great deal of the world hates Jews.
But it’s certainly not just that. Those who love and/or admire Jews care too, of course – but the point is that feelings about Jews are often hyper-intense, both positive or negative.
In addition, the post I wrote about Jews and Mamdani was about the NYC primary, a city where Jews are a very important voting bloc, about 11% or 12% according to most sites. That’s not as large as the city’s black or Hispanic population, but it’s still a large and influential group.
They are also an important voting bloc in the swing state of Pennsylvania. Also in Florida, which is not a swing state, and where Jews vote more for the GOP than in a state such as NY; see this about the 2024 election:
The AP/Fox News Voter Analysis Exit Poll has updated some of its numbers since yesterday, showing even better results than we quoted in the graphic above:
In Arizona, Trump won 38% of the Jewish vote.
In Nevada, he won 42% of the Jewish vote.
In Florida, he won 44% of the Jewish vote.
In New York he won 46% of the Jewish vote.
In Pennsylvania, where the Honan Group did a specific, state-wide exit poll, President Trump won 41% of the Jewish vote.
*Many polls (including CNN) don’t have a large enough sample of Jewish voters to be reliable. The AP/Fox News Voter Analysis Exit Poll is a national poll with a much larger sample size, making it possible to extrapolate data about some specific states.
It’s challenging to get figures for Jews, because of the sampling problem, but those figures for GOP votes among Jews in 2024 are probably significantly higher than most people imagine.
There’s another thing about Jewish voters: they tend to have high turnout.
And lastly, much of the emphasis on the Jewish vote, or appealing to the Jewish vote, is actually an appeal to Jewish donors.
The comment you quoted above is absurd and clueless in the context, neo. The issue was the mayoralty race in New York City which *does* have a large percentage of Jewish voters even if not as high as previously. Not to mention the candidate’s posture towards Israel was in question.
What I really would like to know more about is why most Jews have any level of tolerance for leftist/socialist/antifa Jews? Granted, every group of people have political divisions internally, but there are so many virulently lefty Jews you’d think there’d be more condemnation and volume from the vast majority of Jews who know all too well where socialism (of any variety) leads.
Especially in the last few years many, including myself, have increasingly noticed a trend of obviously Jewish socialists within NGOs, morally bankrupt government institutions, street thugs, and law firms…the ACLU is practically a synagogue there’s so many. Is there any debate at all? Do Jews discuss this, and if so, where are these discussions taking place?
@FOAF:The comment you quoted above is absurd and clueless in the context, neo.
LOL. The people who say “I’ll start caring about Jew-hating when the Jews stop voting for Democrats” are not limiting their remarks to the NYC mayoral race, which is why I didn’t limit my comment to them.
And, as neo pointed out, most Jews in NYC didn’t bother to vote in that primary.
As for Israel, it’s not as though the NYC mayor is in charge of US-Israel relations. A Jewish voter might not put the priority on that you might expect. Ivy League campus antisemitism is not exactly new, but Jews still go there when they can, like most anyone does who can.
As for the Jews I know personally, they are all left-wing, all supporters of Israel, all passionately anti-Trump, but they just live in a different informational reality from me. They routinely support politicians in my area who are not supporters of Israel, and do not feel personally threatened by them. I don’t know how they square that circle, but they do.
And they also seem comfortable with having more and more immigrants, who come from places hostile to Israel or where support for Israel is of no significance whatever. Like I said, don’t know how they do it, except through having some kind of mental filter.
While I’m skeptical of anything associated with AP the numbers cited above sound good to me. I was hoping Trump might break 40% with the Jewish vote. Much better than historically for Republicans but not nearly what it should be given the ongoing abandonment of Israel by the Democrats. I believe Reagan in 1984 got over 40%, with considerable help from Jesse Jackson.
Yes, as Niketas assures us Israel, Jews and Zionism have nothing to do with each other. He can confirm that with his reliable sources in Reddit chat groups while neo and I are forced to rely on our skimpy personal histories …
They’re interested in the Jewish vote as an indicator of where contributions, legal talent, and organizational talent may be going. NB, Jews account for 2% of the adult population, but 12% of the membership of the United States Congress. (Usually, > 95% of the Jews in Congress are Democrats). IMO, Jews should drop their relict antagonisms and figure out who are the people who are a real threat to them. It isn’t evangelicals or white Southerners.
They’re interested in the Jewish vote as an indicator of where contributions, legal talent, and organizational talent may be going. NB, Jews account for 2% of the adult population, but 12% of the membership of the United States Congress. (Usually, > 95% of the Jews in Congress are Democrats). IMO, Jews should drop their relict antagonisms and figure out who are the people who are a real threat to them. It isn’t evangelicals or white Southerners.
Seems like a reasonable place to post this, by Daniel Pipes:
https://www.danielpipes.org/22608/what-just-happened
Which I somehow missed for days.
It isn’t evangelicals or white Southerners.
No, it isn’t. I know plenty of both. As far as most of them are concerned Jews may as well be Eskimos.
@FOAF:Yes, as Niketas assures us Israel, Jews and Zionism have nothing to do with each other.
Either you are distorting what I said, or you didn’t understand it. I’m going to assume the second one and that you’re operating in good faith, but a second such distortion would change my view, certainly.
There are unquestionably Jews that are not Zionists and Jews who do not support Israel. It’s not my fault they exist, but it is your fault if you don’t believe they exist, and it is your fault if you distort something I say. There are even anti-Zionists who convert to Judaism, possibly for the lulz? seems like a lot of work. The point of going to reddit was that there was a group of Jews talking about how they deal with such people. They exist. Not my fault.
@Art Deco:IMO, Jews should drop their relict antagonisms and figure out who are the people who are a real threat to them. It isn’t evangelicals or white Southerners.
Yeah we had that discussion here about a year ago.
I live very far from the South, and in an area where anti-Israel politicians get elected from time to time and where the Christian churches fly big rainbow flags, but the Jews I know in this area are far more worried about the Southerners and the Christians. Again, a different mental filter from mine.
It’s not just Jews.
Humans change their political identities slowly. Jews have been strongly Democrat since FDR. They have also consistently identified with the intellectual, academic and media elites, which have likewise been Democrat. Jews had their reasonable reasons.
Jews are now shifting Republican. This is how change happens.
Slowly.
Its a rather subset of really stupid people that voted for mandani i dont care how many degrees they have forrest gump would know better, the likes of michelle goldberg that started at American Prospect then Salon
I’ve posted these thoughts here before, but it has been a while. All the Jews I have known, a sample size of maybe six, have all fit the stereotype – smart, well-educated, thoughtful, and reflexively liberal. When I have asked, why the loyalty to the Democrats? I have gotten a similar answer from all. Grow up Jewish and you will have it drummed into you – a fear of being “the other”, which is not at all the same as being the minority. For whatever reason, likely decades of media bias, they view the right as being intolerant, and the left as being tolerant. For the first time ever I do sense that things are changing.
FWIW, and with the caveat not everyone is like that, yada yada, the Jewish vote and its relevance cannot be divorced from the context of Jewish activists and as our hostess noted, donor dollars.
For a whole host of reasons, individuals who are Jewish/have Jewish backgrounds, like African-American females, or the Irish, have political punch well above their population percentage weight class because of their role in doing what I would call the scut work of political organizing (and for Jews, also in the donor/media class) in a way that, for example, the Chinese and Indian populations do not.
In Jewish culture, at least in the blue state metro regions I’ve experienced, getting involved in politics is socially lauded and provides high status; by contrast, statistically speaking, those with Chinese/Indian ancestry here tend to consider politics to be a low-class activity. (Go tell your Tiger Mom you are not going to medical school to instead run for a county commissioner or state rep seat – yeah, you’ll more likely be seen by her and the family as a loser).
That doesn’t mean there aren’t people making moves for the Indian/Chinese votes. But it takes a couple generations to get communities organized. There is also a lot less ideology/more crossover in those voter blocs; lots of people with India ancestry who might normally vote R (because they are small business owners/socially conservative) will nevertheless proudly donate to far-left Dems Raja Krishnamoorthi and San Fran area’s Ro Khanna, because they are seen as one of theirs. (Raja and Ro have actively courted the Indian tech bros to leverage the Silicon Valley and other c-suite execs for their donor classes; this has helped Raja build up a massive war chest in IL, which will help in his senate race to fill the open Durbin seat; Ro likewise has amassed over 13M while supposedly being anti-PAC; he is going to make his CA Senate/national moves at some point).
NYC mayoral race will be interesting. I’d still guess the Jewish vote will be pretty split between the pro-Israel/orthodox/civil libertarian types (trending R unless it is an abortion issue on the ballot) vs. the socialist/communist/lawyer activist types (who tend to stay in those metro regions vs emigrate to AZ and Fla). And yes, like Niketas above, the bias against Southerners/Christians, including from perceived anti-intellectual prejudice, social conditioning and again, abortion issue.
Niketas Choniates
You might inform your Jewish friends or acquaintances who are worried about Southerners that the first US Senator of the Jewish faith was Judah Benjamin, from Louisiana, who served from 1857-1861. He later became Secretary of State for the Confederacy. David Youlee, his second cousin, had been elected US Senator from Florida, but he had renounced his Jewish faith.
According to 23 and me, I have barely a drop of Jewish blood anywhere, but when I read the story of Harry Truman deciding to become the first national leader to recognize Israel on account of a Jewish friend, I am deeply moved.
Here’s the account from Truman’s grandson:
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For the first few minutes of that meeting, Eddie [Jacobson] and Grandpa [Truman] chatted amiably. Then Eddie brought up Weizmann and Grandpa became so annoyed that his former partner said it was the closest he’d ever seen his old friend come to being an antisemite. Sitting behind his desk, Grandpa swiveled in his chair, turning his back. In desperation, Eddie scanned the room and found a small statue of Andrew Jackson on horseback.
“Harry,” he said. “You have a hero, Andrew Jackson. I, too, have a hero, Chaim Weizmann. He’s the greatest Jew who ever lived. He’s an old and sick man and he’s traveled all this way to speak to you and you won’t see him. That’s not like you.”
At that point, Grandpa started drumming his fingers on his desk, which Eddie knew meant he was changing his mind. Finally, he swiveled back around.
“All right, you baldheaded son of a bitch,” he said. “You win. I’ll see Weizmann.”
At 11 minutes after midnight on May 14, 1948, the United States became the first country to recognize the independent state of Israel.
Grandpa bemoaned the fact that he was too emotional, but as far as I know, he was only seen with tears in his eyes three times—at the death of his childhood friend and press secretary, Charlie Ross; at the death of Eddie Jacobson; and when Rabbi Yitzhak Herzog, Israel’s first chief rabbi and the ambassador’s grandfather, told him that God had put him in his mother’s womb to help bring about the founding of Israel.
–Clifton Truman Daniel, “The Recognition of Israel”
https://www.trumanlibraryinstitute.org/israel/
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I can barely imagine the impact that act would have on American Jews and the loyalty it would inspire only a few years after the Holocaust.
huxley, good story on HST.
Eddie Jacobson was HST’s partner in the failed haberdashery business.
To a certain extent, how Jews vote is just an interesting phenomenon.
It seems that many of their political positions are antithetical to their interests. But, then, we don’t know what their interests, conscious, unconscious, social, cultural, may be, or their relative importance.
Groups traditionally lower in income than most of us usually vote for those who’ll give them “programs”, which is logical if you don’t see the side effects or long term effects. And the near term is quite important anyway. To vote for a let’em out DA is a bad idea but, if you have a number of acquaintances who have been or might be involved in those kinds of crimes, the impact is obvious. If you live “up town”, it makes no practical difference, since you aren’t walking downtown streets nor using the subway. But for the folks who do…? Well, you know people who have not been let out easy and….simple. The other stuff might happen but it’s not so obvious.
But Jews, on the other hand, don’t seem to be oblivious to the results of their votes. Why should they be? But there they go. So, as I say, even if one isn’t particularly concerned about their influence on state or national affairs, it’s an interesting thing to watch.
Zamdani, on the other hand, is a different case. I suppose the fact that it’s either Zamdani or Cuomo is a big deal for Jewish voters. Not like Zamdani versus a moderate dem.
And he’s so far out that maybe he won’t be able to get anything done. Could be true except for the Overton Window.
Yes, as Neo writes, “It’s challenging to get figures for Jews,” but Daniel Greenfield, in an essay he published shortly after the election, makes some excellent deductions: https://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/11/trump-won-jewish-neighborhoods-across.html
Niketas Choniates:
For over a thousand years, the churches preached that Jews killed Christ and were eternally tainted for that. If you listen – for example – to Holocaust survivors’ testimonies, they uniformly say that they were told by their parents (and this is before the Nazis) to stay home on Sundays when Christians got out of church because it was not unusual for them to be beaten up at that time. Easter was even worse in terms of danger in the streets as a result of the Chuch’s preaching.
In the US, one of the most rabid anti-Semites during the 1930s was the Catholic priest and radio broadcaster Father Coughlin:
Even later, when I was a child, there continued to be a great deal of “the Jews killed Christ and are evil” antisemitism. I have no idea whether priests were still preaching it, but it was still a popular notion. It was only in 1965 that the Catholic Church disclaimed the teaching that the Jews are collectively guilty, both at the time of Christ and now.
Plus, the Crusades were an excuse for massacring Jews. The Klan – in the US South, was very anti-Semitic as well.
1965 is quite recently in the scheme of things. People on the right are aware that, at present, US Christians tend to be philo-Semitic rather than anti-Semitic. But people on the left mostly haven’t gotten the message, because the MSM doesn’t write about it much. Plus, with an almost 2000 year history of Christian anti-Semitism, to except Jews to trust that Christians are now their best friends (which I think is the case) and will not turn on them as before is expecting too much of Jews, I think.
Plus, there is a not-insignificant movement of people such as Candace Owens – who professes to be a devout Christian – who are rabidly anti-Semitic and stirring up Jew-hatred.
@neo: For hundreds of years blacks were enslaved by whites. Is it reasonable for American blacks to fear being enslaved by American whites, today? Some American Jews of course owned slaves, should blacks fear being enslaved by American Jews, today?
Some other things changed greatly for American blacks around 1965. Is it reasonable for them to fear those things returning at the hands of American whites, today?
If you think not, why the difference in what’s reasonable for blacks and Jews to fear today, in 2025?
Niketas:
Blacks didn’t stop being enslaved in 1965. Half of the blacks in the world weren’t murdered for their race in the 1940s. I think you are ignoring the huge differences.
And yes, I wouldn’t be surprised if some black people still fear racial discrimination and don’t trust white people. Plenty of hatred of blacks still exists.
They exist but you vastly overestimate their numbers and importance. Because you have no clue. Maybe they are important on Reddit lol.
@neo:Blacks didn’t stop being enslaved in 1965.
I was referring to Jim Crow.
I think you are ignoring the huge differences.
Well, I think you are doing the same. The Holocaust did not happen in the United States. Pogroms did not happen in the United States. The United States did not impose forced conversions, Jewish ghettos, or have the Inquisition checking to see that Jews stayed converted. I don’t think it is reasonable to fear experiences from outside America repeated in America where they never happened, and many years later.
The two worst things done in American history were not done to Jews. More than one minority, ethnic, religious, racial, can say that they faced persecution or discrimination in America. It’s taken as invidious to say that one group had it harder than another, so I won’t attempt to rank them.
There’s a place on the Snake River in Oregon called “Chinese Massacre Cove”. Guess what happened there. Chinese in America were murdered and violently expelled from multiple places over several decades, including Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and in many small towns you never heard of. Marriage between whites and Asians was illegal in Western states well into the 20th century. Is it reasonable for today’s Chinese Americans to fear that these things will be done to them again?
I wouldn’t be surprised if some black people still fear racial discrimination and don’t trust white people.
But I asked if this was a REASONABLE fear. If you think so, then at least you’re being consistent. But I disagree, Jim Crow is not coming back, and neither is slavery or bans on interracial marriage or massacres of Chinese or burnings of Chinatowns, and it’s not reasonable to fear any of them–but those things at least happened in the US, and not in other countries with other cultures.
I was born in 45. In early el ed, we lived in northwest Detroit, in an area so heavily Jewish that the public schools closed on Jewish holidays, presumably due to lack of students showing up.
Where there were lots of young families, you would, in those days, find a large number of veterans. Not all had served in Europe, of course, but many had and if not them, then the neighbor or brother-in-law. I don’t think I’m adding something retrospectively when I say there was a kind of ….hum…about Jews and camps. Our parents didn’t tell us anything about those issues. Maybe we heard about it, vaguely, from the sixth-grade kids. But it was there, something was there.
As to Christians, I’d be careful. Not speaking for all of the (dimishing) congregations of mainline Protestant denominations, but the headquarters are suspicious, to put it mildly, of evangelicals. And one of the things which most disturb the NCCNGTA (National Council of Churches Nobody Goes To Anymore) is that evangelicals are fervent supporters of Israel.
Of course, the HQ of said denominations haven’t supported a free, liberal democracy against totalitarians in living memory, so this may be more of the same. And, from direct experience, some of the folks in the pews think the same, or close to it.
But, while it isn’t anti-semitism, it does pass over various examples of same.
It is, I would suggest, more in line with the astonishing anti-Israel sentiment on campuses; anti-western and anti-American and Israel is parr of The Enemy. Just happens to be full of Jews. If the US began increasing help to the government of Nigeria against the Boko Haram’s slaughter of Christians, I’d expect the same reaction.
@FOAF:They exist but you vastly overestimate their numbers and importance.
I have said nothing whatever about their numbers and importance, and this is your second distortion.
In the US, one of the most rabid anti-Semites during the 1930s was the Catholic priest and radio broadcaster Father Coughlin:
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Can you explain to me why Southern evangelicals are billed for Fr. Coughlin, who was on the air from 1926 to 1940 and whose stock-in-trade in secular matters was a jumble of measures which had some fuzzy inspiration in the Catholic social encyclicals? He made rude remarks about Jews during the period running from 1934-40, but I’ll wager you’d have to scrounge to find anything on the level of ‘from the river to the sea’ blah blah. The most prominent anti-semite in the United States at the time was not Fr. Coughlin. It was Henry Ford, a notional Episcopalian (and material heretic). Fr. Couglin was ordered by his bishop to return to parish ministry full time in 1940 and cease broadcasting. The most prominent anti-semite during the post-war period was Gerald L.K. Smith, who was actually ordained in the Disciples of Christ.
Jews tend to be better-educated, higher income, and more urban than the US population as a whole, and Jewish political views are largely, though not totally, reflective of this larger demographic. And there is a very high level of fear, contempt, and anger that many educated/urban/upper-middle-class people demonstrate toward Christians and rural people (especially southerners). This complex of negative emotions often greatly exceeds anything that these same people feel toward radical Islamists or dangerous rogue-state governments.
See my post The Phobia(s) That May Destroy America:
https://ricochet.com/548927/the-phobias-that-may-destroy-america-2/
Art Deco:
Please read my comment more carefully. Of course no one specifically blames southern evangelicals for Coughlin. I am merely listing a whole bunch of things – most powerfully among them nearly 2 thousand years of Christian theology that condemns Jews as a whole, preached from the pulpit – that have made many Jews wary of devout Christians. As far as Jews feeling distrustful of the South goes, the Klan was a big factor and hugely anti-Semitic. Of course, many Jews live in the South, and I would think they don’t feel that way, but others certainly do. There was also the lynching of Leo Frank, wrongly convicted of a murder (see this).
Younger people are told by older people who remember. You may think that bygones should be bygones, but trust is a funny thing. Once broken, it’s hard to repair and takes a lot of time. Jews have had enormous reason to distrust Christians. Now they have reason to trust them, but that is relatively recent and people don’t turn on a dime. Plus, most Jews on the left probably are not even aware of present-day Christian attitudes. And antisemitic people who profess to be Christians, such as Candace Owens, unfortunately get a lot of publicity and have millions of followers.
Niketas:
You wrote, “For hundreds of years blacks were enslaved by whites. Is it reasonable for American blacks to fear being enslaved by American whites, today? Some American Jews of course owned slaves, should blacks fear being enslaved by American Jews, today?” That is clearly a reference to slavery. Slavery in the US ended in 1865. But the Catholic Church didn’t stop officially condemning Jews – present day Jews, that is – for murdering Jesus until the year 1965. That’s why I mentioned 1965.
Also, Jews were not heavily or disproportionately involved in either the slave trade or in slave ownership, so why would black people implicate them any more than any other people present in the US back then?
On the other hand, Christian preaching was indeed heavily involved in stirring up anti-Semitism, for nearly two thousand years.
Also, please take a look at my comment right above this for more, particularly the last paragraph.
The Holocaust didn’t take place in the US, but the US did not do a lot for the Jews of Europe (see this, for example) and Jews in the US were quite aware of that. Plus, nearly every Jews in the US had relatives murdered in the Holocaust.
There’s much more, but I’ll leave it for now.
I have cared about the Jewish vote for a long time, without trying to examine why. Looking back, I’d say there are several factors. First, if a body of people with a culture I admire has been the subject of cruel, unconscionable treatment, and has evolved a political response to the treatment that features an intelligent and morally reasonable determination to stand up for other oppressed people, the vote preference commands my attention and respect, if not necessarily my agreement on the whole. Second, any group that votes cohesively is a likely target for persuasion; if Jews are turning into a 50/50 proposition or anything like it, this motive will diminish. Third, as you say, the group is an excellent target for fundraising.
Leo Frank was convicted–rightly or not, the conviction counts in public views–of killing a little girl. There isn’t much that gets the unreasoning rage gland fired up more than that.
I suspect he’d have been lynched if he’d been a Baptist.
@neo:That is clearly a reference to slavery.
Perhaps you missed my original Jim Crow reference: “Some other things changed greatly for American blacks around 1965. Is it reasonable for them to fear those things returning at the hands of American whites, today?”
Please take a look at my comment right above this for more, particularly the last paragraph.
I did. I hope you also read mine, and noted the multiple other examples I gave other than the couple you responded to.
There’s much more, but I’ll leave it for now.
So will I, because this is the sort of discussion that tends to generate more heat than light. Not blaming you for that, or saying that you’re contributing to it.
There is a great deal to be said about the negative experiences of religious, ethnic and racial minorities in the US and how it’s best to approach those things many years later, when conditions have changed significantly. Unfortunately, someone nearly always takes it in a sort of zero-sum “who was more victimized” direction and that is not what I would like be part of.
NIketas:
I saw your Jim Crow reference. Jim Crow, by the way, is why I believe it’s reasonable for many black people to not trust white people – a distrust I mentioned briefly in my comment here. Trust-regaining after such discrimination takes a great deal of time, often at least a century or more. There’s a bitterness and a distrust that remains, and I think it’s quite understandable.
I was also making a point about slavery in the US, which you also mentioned quite prominently.
Nor am I talking about who was victimized more. I am saying that groups that were truly victimized, such as blacks and Jews – often have understandable remaining distrust.
As far as Jews feeling distrustful of the South goes, the Klan was a big factor and hugely anti-Semitic.
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The 2d incarnation of the Klan was a fad organization that had a five-digit membership in 1919, a seven digit membership in 1923, and a five-digit membership in 1930. It formally dissolved in 1944. It harbored a mess of antagonisms. Your hypothesis generates a follow-up question: why aren’t ethnic Catholics antagonistic to white Southerners?
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most powerfully among them nearly 2 thousand years of Christian theology that condemns Jews as a whole, preached from the pulpit
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Theological discourse doesn’t necessarily or even commonly have much practical import. There is also a long history of religious polemics which have Calvinists slicing up the Catholic Church. There are some interesting passages in the Talmud.
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The parts of Europe which have in recent centuries been most lethal for Jews are occupied not by evangelical bodies, but by the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church.
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We’re not talking about being ‘wary’, btw. Outside of the world of orthodoxy, the preference for the Democratic Party is on an order of 4:1. You can find that among other demographic segments (blacks, Puerto Ricans, California Chicanos), but those other segments are not composed largely of professional-managerial class people living an agreeable suburban existence.
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@neo: I’ve read your 4:22 comment, and I will read other comments directed to me if you leave them, but I already said I would leave the discussion where it was and I will stick to that.
So if I don’t respond, it’s not out of discourtesy or a lack of anything to say in response, and I hope that’s all right with you.
There was also the lynching of Leo Frank, wrongly convicted of a murder
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OT
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“Wrongfully convicted” in the sense that there was insufficient evidence to justify a verdict. The judge in the case said having heard the evidence he couldn’t offer a secure judgment one way or the other as to Frank’s guilt. However, the jury was persuaded and a capital sentence was specified in the statute. The Governor intervened and commuted the sentence because he concluded that the testimony of Frank’s accuser was riddled with lies. An employee of the National Pencil Company offered some previously withheld information in an affidavit signed in 1982; a Georgia state commission concluded that his testimony re-inforced a conclusion the Governor had reached in 1915, which was that Frank’s accuser had lied about how the victim’s body had been transported to the basement of the factory but did not demonstrate that Frank was not her assailant.
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Production at the National Pencil Company’s factory was on hiatus due to supply shortages and there was that day only a skeletal staff at the plant. If I’m not mistaken, there were only four men there: Frank, Alonzo Mann (an ‘office boy’), Newt Lee (the nightwatchman), and Jim Conley (the janitor). Lee found the body, in the wee hours of the morning and police took a hard look at him, but the testimony indicated he hadn’t arrived at work until 4:00 pm, more than three hours after the other employees last caught sight of Mary Phagan; on arrival, Frank had told him to come back in two hours as there was no work for him just yet. An autopsy on the deceased readily identify what she’d had for lunch at 11:30 am, so it’s a reasonable inference that she’d died before Lee arrived back at the plant. Conley admitted taking the body to the basement and writing the note found on the body, maintaining Frank had dictated the note to him. (Gov. Slaton concluded that idioms in the note indicated that Conley had composed it himself). Nothing implicated Alonzo Mann other than his presence in the building that day; his mother and father seem to have been anxious that if he offered testimony helpful to Frank, that the authorities would turn their sights on him. The authorities knew from the testimony of the cashier on duty at the plant and from notations in Frank’s office logs that Mary Phagan had spoken to him because he was disbursing pay that day. So, the question came down to whether Frank had assaulted and killed her and then had Conley hide the body or whether Conley had assaulted and killed her. The 1982 affidavit signed by Alonzo Mann does indicates she was unconscious or dead as Conley transported her down the stairs to the basement, so assaulted upstairs.
Art Deco:
People who are the victims of hatred and persecution aren’t crunching numbers. The numbers of Klansmen were enough to make people wary.
And even I recall, as I child, the “Jews killed Christ” hatred a lot of people felt and voiced. It was common, as was persecution of Jews in the older generation, both in certain occupations, country clubs, residential areas, and universities (many of which had quotas).
And Jews were persecuted and murdered in countries that were not just Catholic but also Protestant, such as Germany which was two-thirds Protestant and only one-third Catholic prior to WWII. Luther was a raging anti-Semite.
In your last paragraph you seem to be assuming that Jews vote Democratic because they are wary of Christians. I think many Jews on the left are indeed wary of evangelical Christians, but that’s not a primary or even major reason for their Democrat votes. They vote much as other people in blue cities vote, which is heavily Democratic.
And their votes these days are more on the order of 2/3 Democrat to 1/3 Republican, in studies with decent sampling (which are hard to find). Jews vote much as other groups in cities vote, including those “living an agreeable suburban existence.” They vote fairly similarly to Indian-Americans and Chinese-Americans, but no one seems to care how those groups vote, even though Indian-Americans are a successful demographic as well.
Art Deco:
So am I understanding correctly that you think Franks killed her, or that it is likely that he killed her? Is that what you’re actually saying? Or are you saying we can’t know for sure?
Not that that would justify a lynching anyway.
See this:
Art Deco:
I want to add that the KKK in the US was a Protestant Christian group. They were anti-Catholic.
Just as an aside, in my experience (so essentially anecdotal), dot Indians tend to be incredibly nepotistic. In a company I worked at, the arrival of an Indian operations manager was followed shortly by the lateral move of the production supervisor to QC, followed by a new Indian production supervisor, who, I found out later, was the ops manager’s wife’s cousin. No improvement was noticed in any metric followed this change. Also, a newly created position of “Industrial Engineering Supervisor” was filled by another Indian. I don’t know of any familial relationship, but the whole thing appeared fishy, since the new supervisor had exactly one (1) reportee. I’ve heard similar stories from other people at different companies.
Most managerial and engineering dot Indians are from the Brahmin class and have (IMNSHO) extraordinary expectations of entitlement. It’s not that they are bad, it’s just that they are not as good as they think they are.
And even I recall, as I child, the “Jews killed Christ” hatred a lot of people felt and voiced. It was common, as was persecution of Jews in the older generation, both in certain occupations, country clubs, residential areas, and universities (many of which had quotas).
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I hear you, neo, but I’m not necessarily taking you at face value. I am familiar with what was once called the ‘five o’clock shadow’ and my mother tangled with her parents over the issue. I also had a dear friend who grew up in Manhattan who was poleaxed at being shot the ‘you killed Christ’ line around about 1930 because he’d never heard it before (and never heard it again). There were quotas at places like Harvard and Yale, but only a tiny minority of each cohort was ever a candidate for admission to such places. There were also restricted resorts and restricted clubs. Too bad, but of interest only to the modest sliver of the population who could afford resorts and clubs (and could and did set up their own clubs).
==
I’m also aware that when my father introduced my mother to his grandmother, the salient question the woman had on her mind was whether or not my mother was a Catholic. Can I give you an account of my brother being introduced in 1984 to the parents of a Jewish woman he was dating or my sister seven years earlier being introduced to the grandmother of a Jewish man she was seeing? Antagonisms are everywhere as are preferences about who you would or would not want as a friend or as a son-in-law.
Art Deco:
I don’t know how old you are or when you grew up, but you are minimizing what actually went on.
Jews were banned from country clubs, but “country clubs” were not merely snooty fancy ones, they were more like social clubs. There were neighborhoods that wouldn’t let Jews in. It definitely wasn’t only Harvard or Yale that had quotas on Jews. And because Jews did well in school, generally, they were disproportionately affected by the academic quotas. For example, I was well acquainted with a man who went to medical school in the 1930s. He showed me a scrapbook he kept of all the rejection letters that said “we will not accept any more people of the Hebrew race.” There were a lot of them. He finally was accepted by George Washington U medical school in St. Louis, and to the end of his days he gave that school generous donations.
I personally heard the “Jews killed Christ” denunciations, and I grew up in the NYC in the 50s and 60s. I was actually invited to a church in New York in the 1960s to speak to a Sunday School class on the subject.
And of course various ethnic groups have wanted children to marry within that group. Probably most ethnic groups and most religions, for most of history. That’s not what we’re talking about here.
So am I understanding correctly that you think Franks killed her, or that it is likely that he killed her?
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No. My view is that having Frank on the suspect list was reasonable. He had definitely spoken to her that day and the authorities did not have secure testimony that anyone else had seen her after she’d been directed at the cashier’s office to report to him for her pay envelope. His logs showed she collected her pay. One can construct various scenarios that might fit the data, but the most plausible would be that she was killed in the factory, killed by a man, and killed by someone at home on the premises – i.e. someone who would not be challenged were they discovered there. (The police did question an acquaintance of Mary Phagan’s who had ridden the street car with her). That narrows down the suspect list to four, and the stomach contents suggest she died hours before Newt Lee arrived at work (and what would she have been doing hiding out in the basement for five hours?). A rather diffident character like Frank seems an implausible suspect, but the police were using different filters than you and me and Frank’s disposition when they arrived at his home to tell him there was a dead girl in the basement of the factory he managed looked bad to them. In reading a bit about the case, it impresses you how dull were the tools the police had at their command, how odd were their investigative techniques, how curious their decision-making process. The alternative suspect, Conley, was certainly a feral character with a bad reputation. For whatever reason, the notion that he was an accomplice of Frank was more plausible to the police, the prosecutor, and the jury than was the notion that he was the perpetrator. The judge wasn’t persuaded and neither am I, but that doesn’t demonstrate Frank was innocent. Frank’s lawyers attempted to demonstrate his innocence by building a precise timeline of his activities during the salient period of the day in order to show he had no window in time to commit the murder, an ambitious task. Never looked at a transcript to see if they succeeded. Evidently did not convince the jury.
Art Deco:
Of course he was on the list of possible suspects. However, he was almost certainly innocent. That’s not even the issue – the issue is that he was lynched because he only got life in prison.
I don’t know how old you are or when you grew up, but you are minimizing what actually went on.
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No, I’m putting it in context. The abrasions affluent Jews were experiencing were a consequence of them being affluent.
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My thesis I’m advancing to you is that the Jewish mainstream votes Democratic for reasons that have a great deal to do with their image of and feelings about the society in which they live but not with what other people are doing to them now or did to them in 1925 or can reasonably be expected to do to them in the future. You mentioned the Klan. Why would that be a vector influencing Jews but have no discernible effect on the voting behavior of Italians or Slavs? Yale Medical School had an Italian quota at the same time it had a Jewish quota. The ancestors of Jerry Falwell’s congregation in Lynchburg, Va weren’t the people administering those quotas or the people who put restrictive covenants on property deeds in Milwaukee.
Art Deco:
Also, about the history of anti-Jewish discrimination in the US in the 20th century, see this:
And of course, there’s the more recent rise in anti-Semitism on the left, among black people, and in small segments of the right (the Tucker/Candace crowd).
However, he was almost certainly innocent.
==
I don’t think you can build a case that he was ‘almost certainly innocent’, merely that Conley is a more plausible candidate. Frank was in the building and did speak to her and she disappeared after he’d spoken to her. Alonzo Mann’s 1982 affidavit was another piece of evidence that Conley lied about how Mary Phagan’s body was transported to the basement. It doesn’t tell us who killed her. The Georgia state commission pondering the case noted this. Not a case buff, so no clue why Alonzo Mann sees Jim Conley carrying an unconscious or lifeless girl in the early afternoon and says nothing about it to the other staff or to Frank or to the police. She’s down in the basement for 14 hours before anyone finds her body.
Dr Max Rosenblum, thanks for recommending that article. It was interesting!
You’re telling me that pollsters discovered antagonism to American Jews in 1938 and at other times. That still does not explain to me why that would influence their political preferences today or account for a hostility to Southerners or evangelicals among Jews.
Art Deco:
I have answered that question. I have described anti-Semitism of many kinds, known and personally experienced by the parents and grandparents of younger people alive today. Why should those people not feel a certain amount of distrust, particularly since anti-Semitism is still alive all around the world? Trust, once broken, is hard to regain.
And those 1938 poll numbers are very high. Higher than today – but how high is anti-Semitism in the US today? Let’s see:
I certainly see it constantly, especially on the left but also on the right. Sometimes it takes the old-fashioned Christian form, but far more often it takes the old-fashioned “capitalists” or “Communists” or “working against white people” or “colonists” or “globalists” forms.
Art Deco:
Please do more reading about the case. For example, please see this.
Art Deco:
I have not contended that Jews vote for Democrats as some reaction to anti-Semitism. In fact, I’ve explicitly said they vote for Democrats for the same reasons that other urban residents of blue states vote for Democrats.
We have discussed anti-Semitism here because I originally mentioned seeing a lot of antisemitic discussions online about how Jews vote. And then, after that, I’ve been responding to comments that discussed antisemitism.
I have not contended that Jews vote for Democrats as some reaction to anti-Semitism. In fact, I’ve explicitly said they vote for Democrats for the same reasons that other urban residents of blue states vote for Democrats.
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Core cities are chock a block with blacks and with people without children. Why would the voting patterns of the Jewish population resemble these two segments?
Please do more reading about the case.
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You cannot get to where you want to go with this case. The information base is not there.
“I have said nothing whatever about their numbers and importance”
You sure yak about it as if it is important. And about the “Jewish vote” after complaining people pay too much attention to it.
Art Deco:
The voting of Jews in general doesn’t resemble that of blacks. For Jews it’s generally between 60% and 70% for Democrats, depending on the year (in polls with decent-sized samples and representative sampling technique). For blacks it’s usually at least 90% for Democrats. Why are you comparing those two? They are quite different.
In New York State in 2024, the best surveys of Jews shows they voted 55% for Democrats. At the moment I can’t find statistics for NYC, but I recall reading figures of about 60%.
I can’t find any statistics on how single people voted in NYC in 2024. So there’s no way to compare Jewish voting patterns to those of single people. But, for example, in Manhattan only 50% of adult Jews are married, in Brooklyn 62% are married, in the Bronx 50% are married, in Queens 53% are married, and in Staten Island 60% are married. To me, anyway, these seem to be relatively high “unmarried” figures.
Also, as far as the comparison to patterns of voting for black NYC residents goes, please look at this list of districts in NYC and how they voted. A predominantly black district, the 41st, (80% black and 14% Hispanic) voted 90% for Harris in 2024. Jewish voting patterns are much less strongly for Democrats than that. Also, contrast that with the 44th district, which has a lot of Orthodox Jews. It went 82.8% for Trump in 2024.
@FOAF: Your third set of distortions. I mentioned the Jewish vote only once, in my first comment.
The rest of my comments are motivated by my concern that American Jews who persist in outdated notions of which Americans are dangerous to them, are in much more danger than they would be if they caught their ideas up to the year 2025.
The Congresswoman for Seattle is Pramila Jayapal, one of the most anti-Israel people in Congress. She is not a white evangelical or a white Southerner. She got 83.9% of the vote in 2024. Her base is the progressive left and a loose coalition of non-whites some of whom are progressive and some of whom are in it for government jobs and money.
I don’t know or care how many of Seattle’s 75,000 Jews voted for her, and they’re not numerous enough to have clinched the election for her in any event. But the people who did vote for her and who approve of her anti-Israel views and actions are the progressive white and non-white, non-Christian neighbors of Seattle’s Jews, not Southern whites or white evangelicals. If voting for someone so anti-Israel threatens Jews, that’s who’s threatening Seattle’s Jews.
Sorry for the absence, real life has been mugging me. Will get to it. For what it is worth I do think Leo Frank was likely the murderer of Mary Phagan and even if not the court case did convincingly to my mind display he was a “sex pest” or sexual harasser. But that is a matter in his head, not that of all Jews. I also agree that while if he was guilty he deserved to hang and thus the commutation would have been regrettable, it is not as regrettable as a lynching murder like what he suffered, and I condemn that as murder and a miscarriage of justice.
For what it is worth this is also the attitude taken by the Phagan family, who have repeatedly stated they condemn the lynching but believe Frank to have been the murderer in the weight of evidence, and that while they will declare otherwise if they receive convincing evidence exonerating him, they have not yet. But again, that has more to do with Frank himself and the failings of local authorities than all American Jews.
As for how American Jews vote, I do care about that and think that should be something people care about, but more as one facet (however secondary or tertiary) of the wider battle prep and in line with or well behind things like how Chinese-Americans or Indian-Americans or who have you vote. And if there were serious interest in wondering about how Middle Aged Mestizo Urban Sanitation Workers or WASP blue collar retirees voted I would also advocate studying those. But it should be consummate with other concerns and demographics, and Jews are hardly the top concern there.
As for Asian-Americans or the like, this reminds me of several acquaintances I have met, mostly online, who were Chinese-American or at least claimed to be. Almost all fluent English writers who had lived in the West for years, some of whom were born here. Almost all of whom displayed fierce loyalty to China me even the CCP. While I did not exactly avoid the issue I did avoid pressing it (since I mostly met them in contexts other than modern politics), but you had better have believed issues like “dual loyalty” or worse came to my mind. I do not think for a second that is all Chinese-Americans or even Chinese in the U.S., not even most. But I do think it is a significant minority and those I spoke with were probably “lay” members and so not any kind of deep cover, directly handled asset like Fang Fang or long term infiltrator (several of whom would not be Han). And that the CCP could influence the actions of many such people or their friends or relatives in a way that – while detrimental to the U.S. in the long run – would involve no crime or liability except maybe a moral one (like somewhat subtle messaging about Candidate A being better for relations between China and the US in the hopes of driving votes to them). It definitely struck me as a more pressing issue than navel gazing about Jewish Americans.