Analysts Ponder Whether Clinging to Democrats is Good for the Jews

A call to justice, comfort with other ethnic groups, tradition, even atavism — all are reasons given by analysts to explain why Jewish voters this year again voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic presidential candidate.

Exit polling conducted Tuesday said that anywhere from 64 to 77 percent of American Jews favored Michael Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen over the Republican ticket of George Bush and Dan Quayle.

Among major voting blocs, only blacks are more Democratic than Jews. ABC News put black support for Dukakis at 89 percent. A New York Times-CBS News poll put black support at only 86 percent and said Dukakis won only 64 percent of the Jewish vote.

Among Jews, only the Orthodox seem to counter the pro-Democratic trend, giving as much as 75 percent of their vote to the Republicans.

After three straight Republican victories and despite a sometimes bitter battle for crossover votes, Jewish conservatives now seem resigned to the fact that only about 30 percent of American Jews are ready to support a Republican for president.

But they find solace that younger Jews seem more inclined to vote Republican, and that Bush’s Jewish camp is “the most loyal cadre of Jewish supporters that any president has ever had,” as Mark Neuman, coordinator of Bush’s National Jewish Campaign Committee, put it this week.

‘COUNTRY CLUB PHENOMENON’

Political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset said this week that Jewish voters remain unlike Christian voters, whose support for the Republican Party increases with their personal affluence. He said Jews have a historical allegiance to the Democratic Party, based on a tradition of charity, socialist sympathies and ambivalence about what he calls the “country club phenomenon.”

The election shows that “Jews don’t feel comfortable with the WASP elite, and (are) more comfortable with ethnic candidates,” said Lipset, who is visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation.

Michael Lerner, editor of the progressive Jewish magazine Tikkun, believes Jews support the Democrats because the party reflects “fundamental Jewish values and the long-term recognition that Jewish interests are best served when every person’s economic needs and human rights are met.”

But Jacob Neusner, professor of Judaic studies at Brown University and a Bush supporter, disagrees, calling Jewish Democrats “atavistic.”

“If being Jewish means being liberal, they’re wrong. If it means caring for the improvement of social conditions of the underclass, that’s correct,” he said. “Liberals have shown how not to do that. They just throw money at problems, and clearly that has not worked.”

Neusner also feels the left is more likely to be hostile to Jews and Israel. By contrast, “Reagan on Jewish issues has been excellent down the line.”

The unbalanced support of Jews for Dukakis also raises a question about whether Jewish influence at the White House will be diminished as a result.

Hyman Bookbinder, the former Washington representative of the American Jewish Committee and adviser to Dukakis, said this week that he does not think Bush will ignore Jewish interests.

“The same thing could have been said about the last eight years, and Republican Jews contend (Reagan’s) was the best administration that Israel has ever had to deal with.

REINFORCING THE RELATIONSHIP

“Moreover,” he said, “anybody who suggests Jewish interests would be ignored is really saying Republican commitments are made only to make Jewish votes.”

But concern over Jewish influence led one lifelong Democrat, attorney Julius Berman, to endorse Bush.

“The real issue was whether the president would feel he got a decent representation on the Jewish side,” said Berman, a former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

“I firmly believe that in the very near future the new administration will pick up where the old one once left off, and put pressure on Israel, probably through an international conference. There’s a substantial chance for escalated friction between the U.S. and Israel,” Berman said.

That possibility represents “all the more reason why we should reinforce our relationship with the new administration,” he said.

Lipset said Jews will be heard in the Bush administration because 30 percent is not an insignificant number. Besides, he said, “Jewish involvement in politics is not just votes, but money, and a fair amount (of Jewish money) goes to the Republican Party.”