Blame the Jews!
This is interesting:
…starting in the 1970s, religious denomination began to matter less — and religious intensity to matter more and more. Catholics who went to Mass every week started voting more like Episcopalians who went to church every week than like Catholics who didn’t. During the culture wars of the 1990s, the trend accelerated. This spring a study by the University of Akron’s John Green for the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found “that religious traditionalists, whether Evangelical, Mainline Protestant or Catholic, hold similar positions on issue after issue, and that modernists of all these various traditions are similarly like-minded.” With the critical exception of African Americans — whose religiousness has not generally inclined them toward the GOP — traditionalist Christians voted Republican while modernist Christians voted Democratic.
Jews, however, were different. As late as 2000, Al Gore and his Orthodox running mate, Joe Lieberman, didn’t just win most of the Jewish vote, they won a large majority among Orthodox Jews — the “traditionalists” whom sociologists might have expected to join their Christian counterparts. But it now appears that, like Jimmy Carter, who won the votes of his fellow evangelicals in 1976, Lieberman simply delayed his community’s migration into the Republican Party. This year, for probably the first time, Orthodox Jews will vote like “traditionalist” Christians. Conservative, Reform and non-affiliated Jews, on the other hand, will vote like secular, or “modernist,” Christians. And the Jewish vote, in a meaningful sense, will cease to exist.
I can tell you this much: the Conservative Jews I know are voting for Bush this year. So while Peter Beinart may be right about the end of the “Jewish vote,” he might want to move his Orthodox-Republican/Conservative-Reform-non-affiliated-Democrat scale one notch to the right.
I live in NYC and the Jews I know are almost all voting for Kerry, including the Orthodox Jews. I suspect Bush will do better with Jews, but I’d be shocked if it went higher than 30%. Anyway, we’re talking 2% of the electorate. That’s not much, when you consider that Bush has blown the Muslim and gay Republican vote.
As for the map, yeah it’s interesting, but don’t forget that some of those numbers are based on very small percentage leads. If Bush is at a 55% chance of winning New Mexico today, that could easily go to 45% tomorrow based on the next poll. Thus, this is still very tight.
Bush’s lead is dropping in the Iowa Electronic Markets tonight, so I expect more movement on Tradesports tomorrow and have a feeling you’ll be seeing a different map soon.
Should be interesting on Tuesday though!
- Downtown Lad
Shameless plug – http://downtownlad.blogspot.com/
Lad,
As I’ve said many times before (and as I indicated in tonight’s Betting Line post), I don’t know what’s going to happen.
It’s become obvious that the Iowa Markets has been gamed several times already – I’ve come to distrust it, and others. Tonight’s map represents, well, tonight’s betting, gamed or not.
What I hope is, a majority of the swing states all go to a single candidate.
You see, during some of the worst parts of the Cold War, this nation survived the Kennedy assassination, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter – all in a row. We can endure four (or even eight) years of John Kerry.
But if what we saw in the 2000 election becomes the norm, that we might just not survive.
While I don’t doubt the popular vote will be close, I certainly hope one candidate or the other gets over 300 Electoral College votes.
Liberal Jews for Bush, in NYC and otherwise, here, here, here, and here.
I agree with you there. We don’t need a divided country again.
That’s what disappoints me about Bush so much. He had a wonderful chance to unite this country after 9/11, but he chose the Karl Rove approach to move to his right in his attempt to polarize this country, with Bush getting a slightly larger part of the pie.
Even if it ends up working, it’s bad for the country.
We are at war now, and we need unity. The war trumps everything. Bush should have sacrificed some of his other initiatives (tax cuts, gay marriage) for the sake of some semblance of bi-partisanship.
There’s a time and place for pursuing a right-wing economic and cultural agenda. Heck I voted for it in 1988, 1992, 1996 and 2000. But wartime isn’t it.
I’m voting Libertarian.
- Downtown Lad
http://downtownlad.blogspot.com/
I agree with you there. We don’t need a divided country again.
That’s what disappoints me about Bush so much. He had a wonderful chance to unite this country after 9/11, but he chose the Karl Rove approach to move to his right in his attempt to polarize this country, with Bush getting a slightly larger part of the pie.
Even if it ends up working, it’s bad for the country.
We are at war now, and we need unity. The war trumps everything. Bush should have sacrificed some of his other initiatives (tax cuts, gay marriage) for the sake of some semblance of bi-partisanship.
There’s a time and place for pursuing a right-wing economic and cultural agenda. Heck I voted for it in 1988, 1992, 1996 and 2000. But wartime isn’t it.
I’m voting Libertarian.
- Downtown Lad
http://downtownlad.blogspot.com/
I, for one, look forward to the end of the “Jewish vote.” And the “black vote” and the “gay vote” and every other groupist voting block. The day someone votes his beliefs rather than his skin color or theology is the day he becomes an American.
All the Orthodox Jews I work with (and it’s quite a bit… over half our people were gone during the High Holy Days) are voting for Bush. At least, I can’t find any who back Kerry. Just the “secular Jews” are Democrats, and even some of them aren’t voting for Kerry. But then, we’re in financial services, so that might make a difference.
But it will be nice when various demos aren’t taken for granted by various parties. It’s getting to be the point where blacks are the only group expected to overwhelmingly vote for one party, and perhaps one day, they’ll break out of those chains as well. I guess the Catholics broke with Reagan. I don’t even hear about the “gender gap” any more, other than married women are more conservative than never-married women.
Oh, and I work in Manhattan.
Lad,
Bullshit. Bush didn’t divide the country after 9/11. The BusHitler crowd, and all the Democrats who didn’t tell their idiots to stuff it, divided the country.
On another point, I’ve been expecting Bush to drop on the Iowa markets. It’s the logical response to the gaming of TradeSports: arbitrage.
Let me explain:
Suppose an unknown actor with a large pile of money (let’s call it GS) decides to try to make Kerry look better by making a large number of anti-Bush bets on TS (where there’s no real limit on what you can bet).
Let’s say this causes the odds on Bush at TS to differ from the odds at the IEM.
Let’s say you have some money, and want a guaranteed payoff.
Here’s what you do: you go to TS, and bet that Bush will win. Let’s say that at TS, they have a 52% chance of a Bush victory. So you bet $520, to possibly win $1000. Then you go to IEM, and bet that Bush will lose. Let’s say the odds there are 60% that Bush will win. So you bet $400, to possibly win $1000.
So, you’ve bet $920, and you’ll get $1000, waiting only a week or two for your payoff.
It’s called arbitrage. And it’s cool.
I’m about as non-affiliated as a Jew can get. I was raised with some awareness of my heritage, and have a jar of gefilte fish in the fridge right now, but my religious beliefs fall somewhere between Deist and Pagan. Like my wee wifey, who was raised a Lapsed Catholic and is now a Charismatic Calvinist, I haven’t voted anything but Republican since I saw thru the Libertarian preoccupation with losing on principle. Factor me in; I love screwing up the curve.
My brother-in-law, a Conservative Jew (who’d be Orthodox, but they wouldn’t accept my converted sister) is a very liberal Democrat — but he was raised in Manhattan — even though they now live in Virginny and he works in the defense industry. He’s very devote, says Shabbat every Friday, goes to Temple every Saturday. Can’t tell whether he separates his Jewishness from his politics, or whether he has been so inculcated with NYC liberalism that that’s the only possible position for him.
(the other) John Hawkins
good point about hyphenated “Americans”. I’m sick of it as well. In fact, putting anything infront of “American” to me is an oxymoron.
The point of being “American” is we all accept some core, fundamental, ideals (freedom, democracy) that overide our other “identities”. The sooner hyphenation is seen, generally, as American cultural nonsense the better for everyone.
At my “modern Orthodox” synagogue, it seems that the usual breakdown of Dem vs. Rep would apply — usual for Jews generally, not Orthodox. In some socio-economic ways, the modern Orthodox are closer to non-Orthodox Jews than to Orthodox. But based on anecdotal evidence, I suspect there are more than a few who will quietly vote for Bush and not admit it. We will never know. Exit polling won’t tell us.
Beinart makes some good points about the end of the Jewish vote. I’ve been ruminating about that lately, and I think it probably still exists, but barely. It’s turning into a prosperous/educated/liberal vote. Used to be that non-Jewish prosperous, well educated voters voted Republican, but a higher percentage of them now vote Democratic. Seems to me that the Jewish factor is less and less important.
Teddy Roosevelt said it best:
“There is no room in this nation for hyphenated Americanism. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation of all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabblimg nationalities.”
John,
Hyphenated or not, these people ARE voting their beliefs. Do you really think blacks are voting for democrats simply because they are black? I think it’s because they agree with the bulk of the platform of the Democratic party. And they still remember Goldwater’s stand on the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
On the gay issue, what I don’t get is that the Republican party is going out of their way to make sure that gays do not vote for them. Paul Weyrich summed this up best when he said “Good riddance” to gay Republicans. Isn’t winning supposed to be part of building a Grand Coalition? And if that’s not dividing, I don’t know what is. Bush KNEW he was telling gay republicans to vote Democratic, but he didn’t care.
I’m sorry, but I don’t think Karl Rove and Bush are very smart on this issue. They deliberately chose the evangelical vote at the expense of the gay republican vote. That’s dumb. You should never throw any votes away.
Roosevelt had no problem building a coalition that included Southern segregationists and Northern Blacks. Karl Rove is a moron if he couldn’t figure out how to keep evangelicals and gay Republicans together. How about campaigning against judicial activism rather than singling out gay marriage????
This is the same divisive strategy that the GOP used with blacks in 1964, and they are still paying the penalty for that. They’re probably going to pay a penalty with gays for the next 30 years, with Democrats routinely getting 90% of the gay vote, up from 75% in the last election. That is sad if you ask me. But I don’t think you can blame these hyphenated groups.
This applies to Republican voters as well. Gun-owners, white evangelicals, etc. They’re all expected to vote Republican. But I don’t hear anyone complaining about them.
I don’t see an issue with that. People are just upset when hypenated-Americans vote their beliefs and they are different than their own.
- Downtown Lad
http://downtownlad.blogspot.com
“They deliberately chose the evangelical vote at the expense of the gay republican vote.” Maybe it’s a matter of conscience, rather than cynical vote-grabbing.
On the other hand, maybe the demographics are such that areas with large gay populations are safe Dem. states anyway, and losing some gay Republican votes won’t matter as much as keeping the 70% of people who in every election on the issue, have said there should be no gay marriage. Maybe. I don’t know.
Anyway, I’m not clear on how Bush is blamed for the gay marriage issue being at the forefront. The issue came to him.
The whole thing does tie in to the move of Orthodox Jews. If they are inching toward Bush, as are African-Americans by the way, I suspect it is in part because of a rejection of gay marriage.
I suspect, however, the larger part of it is a distrust of the Democratic candidate to even take an honest look at the problem of radical Islam, much less do anything about it. Over the years, fundamentalist Islamists have had a more adverse impact on those groups than on mainstream white America.
Islamic terrorism now trumps civil rights for some people. It shouldn’t be hard to understand. If radical Islamic rules the day, civil rights are out the window.
Downtown Lad, it takes two to Tango. Bush asked for the dance, and when he did, many just stood up and screamed.
They were screaming before he was elected.
Mike – I disagree. I was on Bush’s side until he kicked me out of the party. So I left. His loss.
Yes – the radical left would always have opposed him, but Bush has purposely chosen to ignore the center. His entire election campaign has been about rounding up the base. Those are Karl Rove’s words, not mine. His belief is that the there are no centrists in this country anymore. I think he’s wrong.
Denise – You say that it’s a matter of “conscious” to not want gay people in the party. Perhaps, but that is not really saying something for the morals of that party when they purposely exclude a huge segment of the population (6% in the last exit polls). You can’t kick gay Republicans out of the Republican party and then complain when they don’t vote for you. And I’m sorry, but even if they’re doing it because of “conscious”, it’s still divisive. Maybe you agree that it’s an appropriate for of divisiveness, but it is what it is.
And the assumption that gays only live in New York and San Fran is a wrong one. The assumption that gays don’t have friends and relatives who are upset by this as well is a wrong one too. A large chunk of this country has gay friends and relatives. More and more every day, as more gay people come out. Demonize gays all you want, but that’s not a winning strategy in the long-run.
As for the Jewish vote and Black vote that you are so suspecting to vote Republican, I am pretty certain you are going to be sadly disappointed next week. Kerry is polling 90% of the Black vote and 80% of the Jewish vote in polls.
You can cherry pick polls all you want, but Tuesday will reveal all.
I’m just calling it like it is. I’m not voting for either candidate after all, and I am sadly disappointed in both of them. But overall, I’m just annoyed that Bush had a perfect opportunity to rally this country after 9/11, and he has thrown that opportunity away (on purpose) in order to pursue an extremely conservative agenda.
Bush made gay marriage an issue in this campaign, nobody else. DOMA is still in effect, and what Massachusetts does is Massachusett’s business. What ever happened to states rights? Bush did NOT have to bring a Constitutional Amendment into play as many conservatives (e.g. Bob Barr) can atest.
Again, that might have been appropriate in a year like 1984, but after 2001 it was the wrong choice to make. And besides from the Federal Marriage Amendment issue, I agree with Bush on most of that agenda.
DL –
1. Conscience really is a word. Look it up. And I doubt Bush would say his conscience dictates against having gays in the GOP, just that it dictates that marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman. I don’t know; I shouldn’t speak for his conscience; hell, I’m a Democrat, so I can’t say what the GOP’s thinking is on this.
2. “Demonize gays all you want, but that’s not a winning strategy in the long-run.” Please point to what I said that was demonizing gays or anyone else. That the gay vote is more of a factor in some states than in others? I can’t see how that is an insult, or how that implies that there aren’t gays anywhere except SF and NY (I live in Kansas, and I can say with virtual certitude that there are gays here).
3. No one says Bush will win the black or Jewish vote, but from what I’ve seen (including the post we’re all responding to) the numbers are not as lopsided as in 2000.
Hi DL,
I think you’re taking my comments personally. They were not directed towards you. Sorry if you read that the wrong way.
1. I don’t mind that Bush thinks marriage is between a man and a woman. Kerry thinks the same thing. But an amendment to the Constitution is quite different, as it would permenantly enshrine into our greatest document the fact that gays will never be equal with straights. To me it’s the same as saying that blacks are 3/5ths of a white person. It sends a very strong message to gay people that we are not welcome in this country.
2. I was not implying that you were demonizing gay people. I was referring to the GOP. But many Republicans are running a campaign that is doing exactly that. Saying that gay marriage will destroy civilization, that gays should not be able to teach (S.C. Senate race), that protecting gays from violence via hate crimes legislation makes someone anti-family (Florida Senate Race), that gays are selfish hedonists (Illinois Senate Race), that lesbians are taking over high schools in Oklahoma (Oklahoma Senate race), that gays should be put to death (Hawaii State Senate race), I interpret that as demonizing gay people.
3. I think they will be just as lopsided. We’ll see who’s right on Tuesday though.
It is for these reasons that I can’t support Bush. He is having the GOP send a message that gays are not welcome. Fine. I will vote Libertarian then. And in 2008, I will support a candidate for the White House who is both conservative and tolerant (John McCain, Giuliani come to mind)
Downtown Lad
http://downtownlad.blogspot.com
As much as we go on and on about our leaders… we do not have a top-down party system. We have a bottom-up party system. Local delegates vote on political platforms and delegates for the next convention up, who vote on platforms and delegates to send to the next convention up, until the National convention. To some extent we expect our leaders to follow. If they don’t follow, we punish them at the polls.
We don’t wait for our leaders to tell us what to think about things. The defense of marriage “thing” is so huge right now that even Kerry knew he had to be for it. To imagine that this issue is manufactured by Bush in an effort to hold the evangelical vote, rather than a response by Bush to political reality… well, lets just say that you haven’t been inside the evengelical community since the election of Bill Clinton, listening to people panic about national morality. (It wasn’t his actions, but his mere election that rocked the evangelical world. Prior to this evangelicals, in general, believed that Republican presidents were watching out for Christian interests, as silly as that may seem.)
I’m not saying Bush manufactured the issue. But he did manufacture the Constitutional Amendment (or at least revive it from the dead).
I believe that was a bad long-term move. It might work for this election, but it’s going to backfire on them in the long-run.
If Bush had instead chosen to campaign against “activist judges” and made that a central issue in the campaign, rather than gay marriage per se, Bush would not have alienated the gay Republican vote. And he could have still drummed up the base.
DL, do you know what it takes to pass a Constitutional Amendment?
Bush knew it was never going to pass. But one of the early steps in the amendment process is a vote in the Senate, and both Kerry and Edwards would have to say either ‘aye’ or ‘nay’, and by doing so make some portion of their base unhappy.
I’m fairly certain that’s all there was to it. Why do you think otherwise?