Kesher Talk

More Jewish liberals for Bush Dept. If you haven't yet read the essay I posted for a friend on Command Post, Why This Lifelong Jewish Liberal is Voting Republican, don't wait any longer. It is passionate and eloquent, and is causing a lot of discussion around the blogosphere.

(It also was responsible for one of those "oh, you too?" moments, as someone I know from shul - who was sent the URL from a source way outside our social circle - emailed me about it, since the main entry is under my name. We have sat in the same small very liberal minyan at least once a month for 2 years, and never knew we shared a common political outlook. The same thing happened last year, when I posted a rant about a synagogue service that drew a "you too?" email from a member there who I had met briefly the year before. Ironically, that Upper West Side closet hawk introduced me to the friend who wrote "Why This Lifelong Jewish Liberal is Voting Republican." I love the blogosphere . . . .)

Another Upper West Side in-the-closet hawk (who is probably also Jewish) has his say.

You know me. . . . I take the subway to work every morning like thousands of other New Yorkers. I shop at Fairway and Zabar’s. Maybe you’ve even been sweating on the next treadmill at the gym. I look like a hundred other guys around my age. I dress like them, too. And if you saw me, you would never guess my secret.

I am not gay. That is certainly no reason to hide. I am not a person of color. That prejudice should have been erased from our national consciousness decades ago. I don’t carry any disease microbes that I am aware of. I don’t even smoke. But the information that I will now transmit has caused people to shout at me, brought dinner parties to an abrupt end on less then polite terms. It has even ended long friendships.

Here it is. I will just say it. I am a Republican.

It’s not just that I am a Republican — it’s more that I am a Republican who lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It’s the life-style and location I have chosen for myself that doesn’t seem to fit the political viewpoints I believe. It doesn’t fit the very progressive elementary school that our child attends . . . . It doesn’t fit the congregation where we choose to go to religious services every week, the über-liberal one. And in that milieu, where people would consider themselves to be the most open, tolerant human beings on the planet, I have learned that openness extends only so far. I have learned that I have to keep quiet about certain things.

He then goes on to recount incidents of condescension and superiority that are way too familiar to many of us by now. The article occasioned a landslide of "me too" letters to the editor, and the Sun printed an entire tabloid page of them.

The editor of the NY Jewish Week is going through the same thing:

With the crucial presidential election only a few weeks away, discussions about whom to vote for are unavoidable. Over the last few weeks I’ve come to recognize the look in friends’ faces — a mixture of surprise and anger — when I tell them I haven’t made up my mind yet. “You don’t mean you’re thinking of voting for Bush?” they ask, voices rising, trying to suppress their contempt.

Speaking of liberal Jewish enclaves, looks like Bush campaign demon Ray Agostini is already making waves in his winter home in Del Ray:

Jewish Democratic leaders in Palm Beach County are worried. They are increasingly concerned that Republicans and the Bush administration have done such a good job of marketing themselves to Jewish voters that the once-reliable bloc of Democratic votes could go in a big way toward the president's re-election.

With 22 days until Election Day, Democrats are scrambling to undo gains Republicans have made among Jews. "It's a very big problem," said Sylvia Wolfe-Herman, a vice president of the United South County Democratic Club. "We no longer have the bloc vote."

Awwww. What is that I hear, in the distance? Could it be . . . . the world's smallest violin?

"The Republicans have made major inroads with respect to Jewish voters," [Charles Glick] told Democrats at a Palm Beach County party meeting last week. "If they get 40 percent, it would be devastating. If they get 30 percent they could win the election. We need to keep them under 20 percent."

The report then goes on to describe a titanic battle of imported Jewish political celebrities, including U.S. Reps. Robert Wexler, Tom Lantos, and Barney Frank, and Alan Dershowitz. The Republicans countered with Ed Koch.

I emailed the article to Ray, who says:

Judith: An old Jewish retiree pushing the Sun-Sentinel next to my table's been telling me that Delray is all Democratic, and that I'm wasting my time. However, I've had quite a few Jewish customers, and they are the most committed of the Bush supporters who've come to my table. I found out today that there is a Republican Jewish Coaltion chapter in Delray, and they're sponsoring an appearance by Ari Fleischer at a nearby temple next Wednesday, which I will be attending. The RJC also put a full-page ad in the local North Palm Beach Jewish weekly, "Jewish Journal," which is distributed in my condo. I think there's definitely hope for the Jewish vote. Regards, Ray

If you live in the Del Ray area and want to help Ray with his campaign table, email him at r.agostini {at} att {dot} net.

Both parties are also battling for Jewish votes in another swing state where Jews concentrate: Pennsylvania. Jews are leaning toward Kerry there, except for the large Russian immigrant community, which - like its counterpart in Brooklyn - is overwhelmingly pro-Bush. Koch is campaigning there too:

Speaking Monday night at Temple Beth Hillel-Beth El in Wynnewood, Pa., Koch urged the heavily Democratic crowd to “have the best of both worlds” by helping Democrats take control of Congress while re-electing Bush. “It’s very hard to break the habit [of voting Democrat] if you’ve done it your whole adult life,” Koch told The Jewish Week. “But domestic issues are overwhelmingly controlled by Congress, while foreign affairs are overwhelmingly controlled by the president. You can protect all the things you want to protect — abortion, Social Security — by voting for Democrats for Congress.”

Hey, that's my argument!

Previous entries on Jewish issues and the 2004 presidential campaign here, here, and here.
Many testimonials from former Gore voters who are voting for Bush this year.

UPDATE: Maryland, a Democratic stronghold, is not quite in play, but Bush's numbers are creeping up. Lots of Jews in Baltimore.

UPDATE: More on the battle for the Florida Jewish vote:

The skirmishing of marquee speaker against marquee speaker is also working to pit residents of the South Florida condo communities against each other. In my travels through the state, a constant refrain was how this election is separating former friends. Many in the audience talked about the anger that spews forth when they announce that they are supporting the President. I have seen this same vein-popping hostility at events at which I have spoken. American Jews are beginning to leave the Democratic Party plantation, and there is incomprehension and intense anger among those left behind.

For over half a century, most Jewish voters in South Florida, and for that matter, in much of America, have voted as if Franklin D. Roosevelt were still on the ticket. . . . Democrats who cling tenaciously to their Democratic Party roots express fear of right wing Christians, as if somehow, the posting of the Ten Commandments in a courthouse represented the same or greater threat to the country as Islamic terrorists setting off a dirty bomb in an American city, or poisoning a city's water supply, or crashing airplanes into skyscrapers or nuclear power plants. . . . The liberal Jews also seem unconcerned that Muslim Americans in one recent poll indicated that they planned to vote for John Kerry by a 10-1 margin. Do these liberal Jews see common ground with the Muslim voters for their economic views, their social issue agenda, or their hatred of Israel? . . . It would be odd, indeed, if the three strongest voting groups for Kerry on November 2nd, are African Americans, Jews and Muslims.

Gee, sounds like the young hip 20-somethings of the Upper West Side. Indeed, people not only vote as do their parents, but as do their grandparents.

UPDATE: Add one more: Martin Peretz of the New Republic.

posted by Judith @ 10/16/2004 08:08:51 PM