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After the Election

I\'m writing this on Recount Wednesday, following Cliff-hanging Tuesday. The national and local scenes are running through my mind, a nightmare set on permanent rewind.
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November 9, 2000

I’m writing this on Recount Wednesday, following Cliff-hanging Tuesday. The national and local scenes are running through my mind, a nightmare set on permanent rewind. The absentee ballots sent in by my own parents are among the 6 million Florida votes being analyzed before we can know who is president. My political friends around the country are in shock: they were prepared to accept that Al Gore, who lost his home state of Tennessee, would lose the popular vote but win the Electoral College. Now the unbelievable has happened, and we’re feeling righteously hypocritical: The wooden vice president and his first-ever Jewish running mate won the popularity contest, and, hey, isn’t the Electoral College an undemocratic outrage?

We’re all cranky, tense, overtired. There are, at press time, two nations, no mandate and a sense in the American electorate that it is looking for a fight, a domestic version of “Who Lost China?” More than 24 hours later, I’m still wearing my “I Voted” sticker, a kind of kriah ribbon of remembrance, for a time, two days ago, when the America seemed simpler.

At Democratic Headquarters in Encino on Tuesday, the turkey roll-ups lay uneaten in their deli tins, appetites amazingly repressed. You can’t eat on a roller coaster. From the California Democratic viewpoint, it was not an unpleasant evening. Vouchers defeated, an easy win for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and the ultimate victories of Adam Schiff and Jane Harman in two extraordinary, hard-fought and expensive congressional races, where Jewish identity wasn’t a factor, but where it didn’t hurt either.

In Encino we stared at the numbers on the TV screen, in a state of non-knowing. Yes, there was the soothing presence of Rep. Brad Sherman, whose Valley seat has been transformed in eight years from the representational equivalent of a torture chamber to a safe haven. Fran Pavley’s Assembly victory over Jayne Shapiro is no fluke, either; the former Agoura Hills city councilperson understands the growth issues facing the 101 corridor, especially the environment, transportation and education concerns in her decidedly Jewish district. Need I say that a good legislator can represent her Jewish constituency even if she’s not Jewish?

The big news in this election is that the Valley is coming to dominate Jewish political L.A. The Pavley seat extends from the Pacific Palisades through to Agoura; the Westside wasn’t much of a factor. Redistricting is coming, and inevitably the city and valley will separate like conjoined twins. Will we stay connected when that occurs?

Still, the present can be scary even when dreams come true. At the Sheraton-Universal, I saw a stunned Steve Cooley seconds after he learned that he had trounced incumbent District Attorney Gil Garcetti, with significant support from the Jewish contingent of the criminal courts bar. After years in legal Siberia pondering justice and how to reform the “three-strikes” law, his day had come.

No matter how chaotic, an election season reveals the next installment on the truth.

The Jewish self-portrait contained in the CNN exit poll still satisfies me. It shows that we still vote heavily (7 percent of the state), and heavily Democratic (85/15 for Gore/Bush in California). Only African Americans were more safely Democratic (90 percent). We’re very middle of the road: Only 2 percent of the Jewish vote went to the consumer advocate (the Nader vote among those 18-29 was 5 percent).

And we’re very grateful. The Jewish voters of Broward County, Fla., flattered with the constant attention of the man who celebrates Shabbat, came out in huge numbers. Broward, where the Jewish vote is 22 percent of the total, gave Gore-Lieberman a 200,000 vote lead (more than it gave Clinton-Gore). Even if it doesn’t spell victory, it’s still one for the books.

Why does this political traditionalism give me such pleasure? I spoke with Prof. Kenneth Wald, head of the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Florida and an expert in Jewish voting patterns.

“We’re finding that Jews are returning to their pattern,” Wald said. “With the exception of the ’84-’88 [Reagan] elections, there are fundamental patterns and values that impact most Jews, regardless of age.”In fact, while young Jews tend to sound like young Americans everywhere, being unattached to party, the fact is that they go back to their Democratic roots very quickly. That goes, too, for the intermarried. “But even those who intermarry usually live in an environment that supports liberal values, with high incomes and education,” Wald said.

After an awful night, I find myself looking for ways to feel gratitude. Since August, five different news media have been testing Lieberman’s “favorability rating,” finding that the Orthodox Connecticut senator stayed “favorable” to about half those queried, and “unfavorable’ with not more than 20 percent. The biggest insight came that for 73 percent, Lieberman, as Gore’s choice, made no difference.

If I’m grateful that Lieberman was safe, I’m also grateful that our children have been watching. This year, the children of the Baby Boomers began to vote. I’ve been speaking with them, young men and women who repeat their parents’ cynicism that it wasn’t quite kosher that a Jew should rise so high. This election broke barriers, turning cynics of all ages into believers.

If you, or someone you know, are a first-time voter, write to me about what this election means to you. I’ll be reporting on my conversations with first-time voters soon.

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