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The landslide that wasn’t: Jewish Americans remained loyal to Democrats—despite allies aligned against them

11 0
09.12.2024

If one were going by discourse, vibes, ink spilled, things of that nature, Donald Trump would have won the Jewish vote in the U.S. presidential election, no contest. The keffiyeh-wrapped anti-Israel far-left, a major force elsewhere in the West, hadn’t made many inroads in the U.S., until all of a sudden it had. University campuses and literary magazines embraced the omnicause, a fusion of preexisting social justice causes now spearheaded by an effort to Free Palestine. Sure, Kamala Harris has a Jewish husband and was hardly affixing a red triangle to her personal brand, and was viewed as too pro-Israel by some. But American Jews, like Jewish people elsewhere, had soured on the left. Right?

The media itself seemed convinced. “This election, however, feels different,” per an August L.A. Times temperature-taking op-ed. Jewish Americans were breaking with our nebbishy ways and—apparently—buying guns, a source of endless media fascination. There was going to be a brand new Diasporic Jewry of muscle, this time in MAGA hats, rather than heading for the Levant. (At most, the Ezra Levant.)

It certainly felt like a change was in the works.

But it didn’t happen.

While many traditionally Democratic demographics did vote for Trump more than anticipated, Jews were not one of them. It’s estimated that 79 percent of Jewish voters chose Harris. Per the Jewish Telegraphic Agency: “If accurate, the National Election Pool’s result would be the lowest proportion of Jewish votes for a Republican presidential candidate in 24 years.”

Republican Jews exist. Depending the circles you move in, they may well seem the norm, but the thing is that they are not. For all the heterodoxy, contrarianism, and liberal disillusionment afoot, the........

© Canadian Jewish News


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