The JTA gives a very mixed result on Jewish voters yesterday. Obama won 61 percent of the Jews in winning Connecticut, while Hillary won over 60 percent of the Jews in New York and New Jersey. Her Jewish margin in California was much narrower, 48 to 44. And In Massachusetts, Hillary won despite losing the Jewish vote, 52-48.
What is the significance of these numbers? I wonder whether it is not indicative of the cultural changes affecting the Jewish community. Traditional Jewish communities like New Jersey and New York are the HQ for the Jewish establishment, which tends to be more conservative and older and hawkish. It's expensive to live in these places. In the Jewish provinces, there are more young independent types, and more freethinking. In Boston and New Haven, there is an actual base of critics of Israel. Hillary draws from the conservative base, while Obama draws from the freer thinkers. Well it's a theory. I think California is a mix of establishment and young independents...
As always, I wish the media would spend more time examining these religious numbers. The raw vote totals are of course not as important as the financial backing. But in any case it is an important current in our political life. Especially now that the religion the media talk about endlessly, the religious right, is dying as a unified cause.
P.S. Maybe events will give me the opportunity to regret that last statement--say when the evangelicals deliver the vote for McCain in the fall. Somehow I doubt it. The overarching lesson of the Republican race is that: They're a minority party, and their base is now fractured. The party is turning against the social conservatives, their 30 year run is coming to an end. Hallelujah. Rachel Maddow said as much on MSNBC a week or so back and was roundly ridiculed and condescended to by Joe Scarborough, one of the most unpleasant personalities on television. I hope she sticks to her guns...
As Phil knows in his obsessive fashion, the number of voters or even delegates isn't the topic here. He's talking about where raw power and uncapped funding will be applied- where the media and where K Street will apply their sometimes soothing, sometimes brutal attentions. But what is this "religion" angle Phil speaks about? Jewish voting trends have nothing to do with religion and everything to do with ethnicity and the kind of ethnocentrism that Phil's new friend Dr. Kevin MacDonald so convincingly writes about in *Culture of Critique* and other works.
As for evangelicals, Phil has his head firmly plugged into his sphincter. The "evangelicals" he is referencing are a segment of what could loosely be called evangelicals; they mostly adhere not to any doctrines under the "evangelical" tent but to Christian Zionism. These "evangelicals", who join Phil in sphincter-plugging mode, are members of the Religious Right that has been played so well these past few years of so-called Republican (really neocon) domination. And we know who their string-pullers have been and, amazingly, continue to be. It would seem that at least until the red calf shows up, and maybe on up until all those poor unbelieving souls (and the millions of unbelieving Jews) have been successfully smoked in a nuclear Armageddon by their benevolent Old Testament Gawd. They choose to ignore Matthew 23, and the fact that Christ strapped some truth onto the world when he excoriated the neocon's Pharisaical ancestors as a generation of vipers. Phil himself chooses to ignore any and all distinctions, and shades the truth in characterizing the Jewish vote as "religious" in character and motivation.
Phil is correct that Republicans have turned against social conservatives; this is evidence of the continuing firm neocon control, despite their being outed by the disasterous Middle East policies. And either Phil has lost his mind while stuck up there in sphincter-ville or he's being quite disingenous about his belief that the evangelicals could "deliver" a McCain presidency. He's well aware, as he lightly alludes, that evangelicals do not favor McCain in any great numbers; even the most rabid anti-Hilary Christians prefer Huckabee or even his cultish competitor Romney over McCain, and would give them their vote even if the she-devil herself stands poised to win. Only the Zionist wing of the evangelical camp- post Giuliani- will lend their influence and votes to the gook-hating McCain; he's got the correct war-like posture necessary to defend The Promised Land. These so-called evangelicals may well deliver some much-needed assistance to McCain. But the most important factor to their leadership is that both sides of the aisle be covered. And so it is, as evidenced by the hideous overtures to AIPAC from Obama and by Hilary's entire senatorial career.
The "religous right" may seem to be dying as a unified cause. Whatever. But it isn't a merely a death; its a divorce followed by murder. The neocons or whatever label they choose after the elections have recognized that it is time to stab their poison stinger into their hosts, and watch them sink below the surface. Unlike in the fable, these scorpions have managed to catch another ride over the waves. For now. Perhaps after a decade of recovery from recession and watching their children die for another country, some of the deluded fools will begin to wake up and do something about their slow procession into extinction.
How Obama spins.
Before you read, a brief Pop Quiz.
Topic: Exploitation for Gain
Question 1: The NAACP had ______ black Presidents before 1975.
Is it:
A. 12
B. 7
C. 3
D. None, because all previous presidents since the organization formed were "whites", nearly all of them Jews.
Question 2: Jewish domination and leadership of "civil rights" organizations was motivated by their:
A. Stereotypically altruistic impulses that have contributed to their current impoverished state.
B. Fear of a Mandingo uprising rumbling out of the south Bronx, swallowing deli and diamond brokerage alike in its wake.
C. Leonard Bernstein said it was groovy to get mau-maued on a quarterly basis, so join the board already.
D. "Jewish support for black causes was a way for Jews to broaden their own rights without becoming conspicuous by advocating their group interests."
(
“>link to ft.com
Obama unveils radical mortgage plan
By Jeremy Grant and Eoin Callan in Washington
Published: August 28 2007 22:04 | Last updated: August 28 2007 22:04
Unscrupulous lenders who deceptively sold subprime mortgages to millions of Americans should be fined and the proceeds used to help bail out borrowers facing a wave of foreclosures, according to Barack Obama, the Democratic senator running to be his party’s presidential candidate.
The proposal is among the most radical yet from a leading Democrat and comes as Washington tries to respond to a growing wave of foreclosures and a crisis in credit markets.
It also comes amid greater discussion in Washington on whether the mortgage industry – including credit rating agencies involved in rating mortgage-related securities – should be more tightly regulated to prevent a repeat of the crisis.
Writing in today’s Financial Times, Mr Obama blamed lobbyists working on behalf of lenders for obstructing tougher regulation of the subprime industry, adding: “Our government failed to provide the regulatory scrutiny that could have prevented this crisis.
“While predatory lenders were driving low-income families into financial ruin, 10 of the country’s largest mortgage lenders were spending more than $185m (€136m, £92m) lobbying Washington to let them get away with it,” he wrote, citing figures from the Centre for Responsive Politics.
Wall Street banks have also stepped up their lobbying over the issue of subprime lending as their underwriting practices come under scrutiny. It emerged this week that Citigroup paid $160,000 in the first half of this year for lobbying services from Ogilvy Government Relations.
Mr Obama said the government needed to “stop the unlicensed, unregulated, fly-by-night mortgage brokers who are hoodwinking low- income borrowers into loans they can’t afford”.
He added that “Washington needs to stop acting like an industry advocate and start acting like a public advocate”.
Curtailing undue corporate influence on policymaking in Washington is one of Mr Obama’s signature issues.
Mr Obama’s proposal is one of many to have emerged in recent weeks from Democrats as they seek to take advantage of what they see as a potential weakness in the Bush administration’s response to the subprime crisis.
Christopher Dodd, Senate banking committee chairman, and Barney Frank, who heads the House financial services committee, have called on the administration to allow giant mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to step in by lifting caps on their mortgage portfolios.
The administration opposes such a move, arguing that Congress must first pass pending legislation reforming how they are overseen. It favours less radical steps such as expanding a loan insurance scheme already operated for decades by the Federal Housing Administration.
Ethan Harris, an economist at Lehman Brothers, said: “There needs to be rationalisation – more centralisation – of how mortgage lending is regulated.”
Not much to go on. Might it be simply that Jews in Connecticut are on average richer than Jews in New York (outside Manhattan) and New Jersey, and thus the Jewish vote mirrors the rest of the electoral pattern (rich, young, and poor for Obama; middle, working class for Hillary).
I say again, for a guy who wants Jews to assimilate out of existence, who himself married out and celebrates Christmas, and who wants Israel to morph into some sort of binational secular state. Phil sure seems to spend a lot of time obsessing about every facet of Jewish life. Can someone explain the reasoning?
Getting back to the Jewish vote, the only way to know for sure Ed, Keating, and American goy, is to get back to the yellow stars, and tattoos on the arms, isn't it guys
How did the Lutheran vote break down?
Michael Blaine
www.rudelystamped.blogspot.com
Not enough big Democratic Jewish donation dollars for Clinton's campaign anymore? She just had to 'loan' her own campaign 5 million of her own hard-earned Wal-Mart board member dollars (she no doubt had to cash out some of that Wal-Mart stock she owns from being a former board member).
Is her fundraising effectiveness on the wane in the Jeish community and is Obama's on the rise? As wel well know, Obama has already received many millions from many big Jewish donors, mostly those in Hollywood and in the rest of the American West while Clinton, as you say, has the big Jewish money in NY, NJ, and the most of the rest of the East (however, her campaign is running out of money quite fast, while Obama is flush with cash from the millions of citizen donors who send small sums which really begin to add up if enough are received).
Using exit poll data from the NYT:
Clinton won the Catholic vote in MA by 64-33, even higher than her women vote. Catholics were 45% of the Democratic voters. It is hard to see this as a "values" vote considering Clinton's camp tried to paint Obama as soft on pro-choice rights. The Hispanic vote in MA was only 5%, so Hispanics do not account for this strong Catholic vote for Clinton either.
The Jewish vote in MA, 6% of the electorate, went 52-48 for Obama. This might partially reflect the large number of Jewish college students in the state.
In NJ, the Catholic vote, which is 38% of the electorate, went 69-26 for Clinton, and the Jewish vote, which is 9% of the electorate, went 63-37 for Clinton. These percentages are consistent with the votes by sex and race.
But then if we look at CT, Clinton again won the 42% of the vote which was Catholic, 59-39, even though Obama won the state. From the 10% of the Democratic voters who are Jewish, Obama won 61-38. Obama won CT even though African-Americans were only 9% of the voters. The Hispanic vote in CT is insignificant.
Let's look at New York, Clinton won the Catholic 37% of the vote, 66-30, the Jewish 16% of the vote, 65-33 and the Hispanic 10% of the vote, 73-27. Yet, Clinton only had 58% of the white vote.
Although the under 45s trended toward Obama and the more educated trended toward Obama, the differences between Clinton states and Obama states do not appear to be significant. And income differences did not appear as significant as education levels.
What stands out are the ethnic votes which gave Clinton her wins in MA and NJ and her large margin in NY. Northeastern ethnic Catholics gave Clinton her margin of victory. Jewish voters in more ethnically-conscious NY and NJ also helped.
The NYT did not have exit results for CA and many of the other states, so I have not been able to analyze these yet. It would not surprise me if we saw a similar picture in CA.
Going into the election, I feared ethnic polarization and a not so subtle racism, based on vote trolling with Italian friends in NJ. I expected Jewish voters to also trend heavily to Clinton after extended discussions with my rather extended Jewish family and the numerous e-mails going around the Jewish community trashing Obama.
Still I was very surprised at the clear effect revealed by the Catholic data. And I was also momentarily surprised by the split in the Jewish vote – NY and NJ heavily Clinton, MA and CT going to Obama.
While it might be easy to understand woman voting for Clinton and Afro-Americans voting for Obama, and even an affinity between the Clintons and Hispanics, it is more difficult to see the bond between white ethnic Catholics and Clinton. If the vote was motivated by racial antagonisms, will these voters stick with Clinton in a general election where McCain is the opposition?
The youth vote may auger well for an identity-free election in another 20 years, but so far in 2008 we are much closer to the Nixon era.
The sub-prime mortgage mess (the tiny poor greedy v the predator class) is just the tip of the iceberg–just wait until the
real tally hits, made up of good credit folks who bought into
free choice ARMs, second mortgages, where what you didn't pay each month just got added on top of the mortgage balance at compound interest…. this will sink the while world. The bankers alone will win in the end, as usual.