Courting the Antisemitic Vote

We’re accustomed to politicians courting the Black Vote, or the Jewish Vote, or the Youth Vote. But what about the Antisemitic Vote?

CNN correspondent John King asserted on July 21 that “there could be some risks” for Kamala Harris if she chooses Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro as her running mate because “he’s Jewish.”

CNN correspondent John King asserted on July 21 that “there could be some risks” for Kamala Harris if she chooses Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro as her running mate because “he’s Jewish.”

In other words, antisemitic voters would not cast their ballots for a Harris-Shapiro ticket. That may be true. The question is whether courting the votes of bigots should be an acceptable political strategy.

There was a time when America’s major political parties were reluctant to nominate a Catholic for president, for fear of alienating anti-Catholic voters. The Democrats shattered that taboo by nominating New York governor Al Smith for president in 1928. 

But some prominent Democrats, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, continued to court the votes of other bigots. From loudly denying that he invited African-Americans to a 1929 luncheon, to refusing to support anti-lynching legislation in the 1930s, FDR repeatedly sought to show white racists that he deserved their votes. So did Jimmy Carter, when he declared during the 1976 Democratic primaries that he supported the right of whites to safeguard the “ethnic purity” of their neighborhoods against the “intrusion of blacks” and other “alien groups.”

White racists were not the only bigots whose votes FDR courted. He was concerned about the Antisemitic Vote, too. The issue came up when FDR met privately with U.S. Senator Burton Wheeler (of Montana), one of his close political allies, on August 4, 1939. Wheeler’s confidential memo about the meeting, dictated to his secretary immediately afterwards, preserved the contents of their conversation.

The two discussed possible presidential candidates in the event that FDR decided not to run for re-election the following year. Among the names that came up were Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Democratic Party chairman James Farley.

A Hull-Farley ticket “could not get elected,” the president asserted. The problem, Roosevelt and Wheeler agreed, was that “the Jewish-Catholic issue would be raised.” That was because Farley was Catholic and, as Wheeler put it, “Mrs. Hull is a Jewess.”

FDR corrected him: “Mrs. Hull is about one-quarter Jewish.” (They were both wrong: her father was Jewish.) The president continued: “You and I, Burt, are old English and Dutch stock. We know who our ancestors are. We know there is no Jewish blood in our veins, but a lot of these people do not know whether there is Jewish blood in their veins or not.”

According to Senator Wheeler’s memo, the conversation also included a casual use of the n-word by the president. It was not the first time FDR used that slur behind closed doors.

Franklin Roosevelt, like many politicians before and after him, was keenly attuned to the advantages of choosing candidates, or taking positions, that would appeal to particular segments of the voting populace–even if it meant excluding a possible candidate because antisemitic voters might disapprove of his wife’s ancestry.

The prevalence of antisemitism in American society in the 1930s sometimes is cited as the reason for Roosevelt’s policy of suppressing Jewish refugee immigration far below the limits allowed by law. Ken Burns made that argument in his Holocaust film a few years ago.

But that excuse ignores the fact that if FDR had just permitted the existing immigration quotas to be filled—without liberalizing the immigration system itself—many Jewish refugees could have been saved. More than 190,000 quota places from Germany and German-occupied countries were left unused from 1933 to 1945.

The claim that antisemitism in American society tied FDR’s hands on immigration is not merely a misunderstanding of Roosevelt’s policy options; it’s also a way of saying that the president understandably adopted a policy of reducing Jewish immigration in order to avoid alienating anti-Jewish voters. It implicitly justifies FDR’s decision to court the Antisemitic Vote.

The Democrats’ nomination of Sen. Joseph Lieberman for vice president in 2000 should have put an end to the old policy of courting antisemitic votes. But a new constituency of antisemitic voters has arisen during the past year—the pro-Hamas protesters who have been using “Zionist” as a codeword for Jew, who have been brandishing signs calling for a “Final Solution,” and who have been celebrating the October 7 attacks, celebrations that President Joe Biden recently characterized as antisemitic.

Pursuing the votes of antisemites and other racists is wrong. It gives legitimacy to dangerous extremists who should be kept on the margins of society, not treated as a legitimate part of mainstream American political culture.

Those voters are the ones whom CNN’s John King evidently had in mind when he warned of the “risk” of nominating a Jew for vice president. That risk is real—but the Democrats should ignore it, because pursuing the votes of antisemites and other racists is wrong. It gives legitimacy to dangerous extremists who should be kept on the margins of society, not treated as a legitimate part of mainstream American political culture. Bigots deserve to be ostracized, not courted.

Dr. Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and author of more than 20 books about Jewish history and the Holocaust. His latest is Cartoonists Against Racism: The Secret Jewish War on Bigotry, coauthored with Craig Yoe.