Any visitor to this site knows that I care, too much, about who is Jewish. Lest I disappoint, I wonder if the lopsided defeats of two Jews, Mark Green and David Yassky, in runoffs in New York City yesterday for the Democratic nominations for public advocate and comptroller, respectively, aren’t a signal of the end of the Jewish meritocracy. I say that partly because this was in another way an ethnically-historic election; Yassky was beaten by John Liu, a councilman who if he wins in November, would be the first Asian-American elected to NYC citywide office.
But I also say it because it feels like the end of something. Mark Green epitomizes for me the Jewish rise in the establishment over the last generation. I first began following him in ’86, when he took on Alfonse D’Amato for the U.S. Senate; I was dazzled by Green’s verbal gymnastics, his telegenic smile, and the fact that he had been a Nader’s Raider once, and had written an antitrust book for Nader along with young Bruce Wasserstein, before Wasserstein got into M&A and made bundles rejiggering the industrial landscape. I made a couple of lasting friends among Green’s campaign staff. One of them gave me a talismanic statement about the Jewish meritocracy. He told me that his father had come home one day when he was a boy and announced with amazement, "Guess what, there’s this test, and you take it in high school, and depending on how well you do, it determines how well you do in life." Not far off the truth, that. And it was said with a European wonder at this goldene medina— the golden land, Yiddish for America.
Green and Yassky’s opponents ran as outsiders; and according to the Times, they were able to tie Green and Yassky to Mayor Bloomberg because they (G and Y) had gone along with the mayor’s effort to get the City Council to amend the term limits law to allow him to run for a third term. As we pointed out a day back, Green used campaign literature that appealed to Jewish ethnocentrism and Zionist feeling. While his opponent Bill de Blasio had Working Families Party support and exploited his marriage to a woman of color.
It all speaks to the changing role of Jews in American society. Privileged, more conservative, tied to Israel, whose ruthless destruction of civilians Green defended a few months back… and the Democratic base knows it.
Outsiderness helped bring us in with a fury 30 years ago. All good things come to an end.
