It is not at all clear that this is still a very important question: Jews in the US do not have the numbers to tip an election except in very rare cases and in very specific states. Donald Trump has to worry about women, he has to worry about Latinos, he has to worry about all those large pools of voters with which he does relatively poorly. The Jews? Them he can do without. Especially so now, when the one really big political fish in the Jewish puddle – Sheldon Adelson – has already decided to cast his lot with the Republican candidate. “The alternative to Trump being sworn in as the nation’s 45th president is frightening,” Adelson wrote in the Washington Post.
He might be the first, but will not be the last, to make such a decision. The new Trump – post primary victory – is going to be more civil, less blunt, more careful about what he says, more attentive to his fellow Republicans’ sensitivities. He will surely count on the fact that people have short memories. By the time they go to the polls, the shadows on his over-the-top primary season will be vague. By the time they go to the polls, their instinctive tendency to vote for the party they prefer will be reignited. Yes – some voters will not be tempted, and will not forget, and would rather vote for Hillary Clinton, or stay home, than vote for Trump. But not as many as you think. Not if Trump plays his cards right.
In the last couple of days – possibly because of the Adelson move, but also because of other things – several writers dealt with the question of Jewish support for Trump, and with the not-exactly-the-same question of pro-Israel voters’ support for Trump. And these writers, by and large, made three arguments:
1. Trump’s rhetoric and policy positions are not in line with Jewish values, and hence he will not get many votes from Jews.
2. Trump is not good for America, and hence is not good for Israel either, so pro-Israel voters should not vote for him.
3. Trump is a mishap that prevented the Republican Party from finally making inroads with Jewish voters.
A Politico article focused on the third argument. “He’s a squish on the social issues and a squish on the fiscal issues, so he solves some of the problems the party has typically had bringing liberal Jews into the fold,” Michael Goldfarb, co-founder the hawkish Emergency Committee for Israel, told Politico. “On the other hand, his most rabid supporters enjoy photoshopping Jewish reporters into concentration camp scenes and ranting about Jewish control of the media and the banks, so it probably ends up a wash. Trump’s energized the anti-Semites and he shows no interest in disabusing them of the idea that he’s their man. … Until and unless he does, he probably underperforms with the Jews.”
Good point, but I have two reservations.
The first: Trump is going to calm the waters and will actively make it clear that anti-Semitism is not a sentiment to which he subscribes. Some of the people around him understand that he needs to do that – and he will. His daughter will make sure of that.
The second: Goldfarb does not specify what he means by “underperforms.” To be more specific: judging by the expectations of Jewish Republicans in recent election cycles, every GOP candidate underperforms. Jewish hawks expected George W. Bush to get a boost among Jewish voters in 2004 – because of his support for Israel’s efforts to curb the second Intifada – and were disappointed. They then thought that John McCain is likely to get more votes from Jewish voters – based on the assumption that Obama has a troubling track-record on Israel – and were disappointed. They then expected Mitt Romney to have a field day with Jewish voters – based on Obama’s proven record of being a president that does not quite get along with Israel – and were disappointed. Now they say that had it not been Trump, the GOP could have made gains with Jewish voters. Well – maybe. But the evidence supporting such an assertion is weak, and not much different from the evidence we saw four, eight, and twelve years ago.
The second argument was made by Yair Rosenberg in Tablet: “what is good for America is good for Israel and what is bad for America is bad for Israel… A world led by an empowered America with a thriving economy and an outward-looking foreign policy is a good world for Israel… In other words, regardless of whether you find his Israel policy positions appealing, Trump would be a disaster for Israel because he would be a disaster for America.”
Yes, that is also a good point. With one caveat: Rosenberg assumes as fact that Trump is bad for America and that America under Trump will not have a “thriving economy and an outward-looking foreign policy.” He might be right – but is this not what the US election is all about? Some people think Trump will be a disaster for America. They will not vote for him. Some people think he will be good for America. For these people, Rosenberg’s argument is void. In other words, the argument works only for those voters who do not even consider voting for Trump, which makes the argument, well, unnecessary.
The first point is, of course, the most difficult to deal with. That is because Jewish values are not easily defined (my new book, which is coming out in Israel in about two weeks, and is also being translated to English, grapples with the question of what are Jewish values). But let us assume for the moment that by Jewish values we mean the values in which Jewish Americans currently believe. If that is the case, then, again, what we have here is a circular argument similar to the previous argument. The Jews who believe in values incompatible with Trump’s values ought not consider voting for him. Is that not obvious?
Still, we have to ask: do most Jews in America have values that are different from Trump’s?
To answer this question, we first have to find out what values Trump stands for – a question not easily answered. We then have to find out which of these values is compatible or incompatible with the views of most Jews. We than have to ask: are the values trumpeted by Trump less compatible with Jewish values than the values trumpeted by previous Republican candidates? As Goldfarb says, on “social issues” and “on the fiscal issues” Trump’s views might be more compatible with those of most Jews than the views of previous GOP candidates. In fact, one could make the argument that on foreign policy Trump’s views are also more in line with the views of most Jews than the views of previous GOP candidates (he is less hawkish, less interventionist, less aggressive). True – his views are not in line with those of many Jewish Republicans. But Jewish Republicans are a minority, so being incompatible with them is hardly evidence that Trump runs against Jewish values.
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