I always feel guilty when I make posts like this. I feel that I'm arming anti-semites. Then I say, I can't care, and the only question is whether what I'm saying is true. And I think it is true. So here goes.
This piece in the Forward contains the usual argument about Jewish voters in Florida playing on the minds of the presidential candidates. Again I have to insist that Jewish voters are far less meaningful in the presidential process than Jewish donors and Jewish reporters. Ari Berman said this the other day at the Center for Jewish History, and I applaud him for his candor and urge journalists to think about this and drop the hypocrisy.
If you are a presidential candidate, you are very aware of the Jewish presence in the establishment. I’m not going to talk about money here; I know more about the culture of journalism. The candidates know that many of the reporters who will be looking at them are Jewish. I always think of NPR, which everyone I know listens to. Well their two main political people are I bet Jewish [a weird phrase, on reflection; I’m sorry, but I am friends of one of these people and didn’t want to name names out of delicacy], and ATC anchors Robert Siegel and Melissa Block I wager are also Jewish. Daniel Schorr is Jewish. Jeff Zucker at NBC is Jewish and has dissed the Palestinians. The other day Wolf Blitzer got angry that Jimmy Carter had reportedly said that Israel has 150 nuclear warheads (saying this statement compromises nonproliferation efforts; maybe it helps?). Well Blitzer is Jewish and worked for AIPAC once. Jodi Kantor who reported for the Times on those mysterious Jewish voters laying in the Everglades with nictitating eyes is I wager Jewish. I could itemize further, but you get the point. Yes Jewish reporters are liberals by and large. But leave aside abortion and gay rights and stem cells–on Israel/Palestine issues, Jews, even well-informed Jews, are generally biased toward the Israeli narrative. Daniel Schorr, big liberal. Well his mother lit candles for Palestine and he disses Arafat. This is, as I have said before, because Israel is a central part of American Jewish culture and identity, and though many have fallen off the bus, like me and Tony Karon, reporters are consciously or not invested in these narratives.
Politicians see who is empowered. The Washington Post hired Jeffrey Goldberg to blast Jimmy Carter’s book, and when Goldberg blasted Walt and Mearsheimer in The New Republic, New York Times columnist David Brooks, Iraq war booster, congratulated him for writing a great essay (it’s actually lousy; full of bluster, and lately, largely recanted). Many of the Times columnists are Jewish. There is no point in doing a headcount. Judy Miller who rang in the Iraq war with bad reporting, and suffered for it, is Jewish, and so is Bill Kristol, who drafted the Iraq war memos going back to ’99 and hasn’t suffered. I have little doubt how they feel about Israel/Palestine.
What I am saying is that presidential candidates worry very much about how the press is going to portray them, a lot more than they worry about Florida voters; and so Israel/Palestine is a giant concern. We all remember Jesse Jackson’s ’84 Hymietown comments. Well political maven Larry Sabato says here they hurt him with the press.
It is hard for reporters to write about themselves. Harder still to write a word about Jewish power in the establishment. Ergo: Jewish voters in Florida.
P.S. On reflection, I note that this post (stupidly) failed to mention the super-delegates. I think the candidates might be playing to them right now….
