Political Realignment Sparks Debate Over Its Impact

Barack Obama’s new-look coalition was evident in Times Square on election night. The Jewish community, with its long-standing commitment to broad coalitions, could benefit from the new political reality, observers say. getty images

Barack Obama’s new-look coalition was evident in Times Square on election night. The Jewish community, with its long-standing commitment to broad coalitions, could benefit from the new political reality, observers say. getty images

by James D. Besser
Washington Correspondent

Last week’s groundbreaking election of Sen. Barack Obama hints of an emerging political realignment that could bolster Jewish power — or threaten it.

The complex shift includes the movement of Hispanics, women and well-educated suburbanites back to the Democrats, the growing activism of young voters, innovative new modes of fundraising and a growing backlash against the Republican “culture wars” focus of the past two decades.

Jews are “well positioned” to take advantage of the change because of their longstanding commitment to coalition politics, said Rabbi Marc Schneier, founder and president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, a group that has promoted closer ties between Jews and some of the groups that may comprise what party officials hope will be a new Democratic majority.

Jews,

he said, “will thrive in this pluralistic climate,” he said.

Exit polls showing strong support for Obama — 78 percent — suggest Jews will continue to have a central place in the party despite the growing involvement of other ethnic groups, he said.

Progressive Jewish groups couldn’t be happier.

“What’s exciting here is a growing sense of different groups coming together around solving the issues we all care about,” said Vic Rosenthal, executive director of Jewish Community Action, a Minnesota group that works on issues of immigrant rights and poverty. “My hope is that the election is producing a greater clarity about the interconnectedness that we have with one another. The hard part is, can you keep this alignment together, and get some serious policy changes from it? The challenge is sustaining it.”

But the shifting political sands also include more ominous signs for a community that has enjoyed disproportionate political influence for many years.

Jews are diminishing as a proportion of the electorate in general and of the Democratic Party. At the same time, the new modes of political fundraising that Obama used so successfully this year could dilute the impact of Jewish big givers who have been a major factor in pro-Israel political clout.

And Paul Green, a political scientist at Roosevelt University in Chicago, warned that by continuing their longstanding and overwhelming preference for the Democratic Party, Jewish voters are risking the community’s political future.

“Sooner or later, the Jewish vote is going to have to equate with the notion that if Israel is the big issue, we have to become much more bipartisan,” he said. “So the continuing alliance with the Democrats is a danger; I firmly believe that.”

But Green also said Israel and its U.S. supporters have nothing to fear from President-Elect Obama.

“Just look at his first picks: [Rep.] Rahm Emanuel and David Alexrod,” he said, referring to Obama’s choice for White House chief of staff and his longtime political guru, who is expected to get a top adviser post. “He picked the cream of the crop of Chicago’s Jewish community.”

The big unknown in the shift that became apparent in last week’s voting is this: how will Obama manage a confluence of crises unlike that faced by any incoming president since Franklin Roosevelt in 1932?

Even ardent conservatives believe he has a chance of fundamentally changing American politics — if he is seen as a successful president.

“This was a good Democratic year,” conservative columnist William Kristol wrote in the New York Times this week, “but it is still a center-right country. Conservatives and the Republican Party will have a real chance for a comeback — unless the skills of the new president turn what was primarily an anti-Bush vote into the basis for a new liberal governing era.”

Numerous analysts caution that one election does not a trend make. And last week’s results — with the general electorate and with Jewish voters — were unquestionably affected by an economic crisis and an unpopular Iraq war that created a unique set of political circumstances.

Still, there were clear signs that the nation’s basic political alignment may be changing.

Presidential historian Allen Lichtman, author of the recent book “White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement,” said the election points to a GOP that has become narrower even as the electorate becomes far more diverse.

“This was not a singular election; it was part of a longer trend,” he said. “It suggests the possibility, at least, of a new Democratic era — and tremendous difficulties for a Republican Party that is based so heavily on white Protestant America.”

Particularly worrisome for the Republicans, he said, was the modest but significant shift of educated, well-off white suburban voters to the Democratic side.

Latinos, now the biggest ethnic minority in America, broke heavily for Obama despite early predictions McCain would capitalize on his reputation as a progressive on immigration reform, and they comprised a bigger portion of the electorate — 9 percent, compared to the Jewish 2 percent.

Young voters are another important element of the emerging Democratic coalition, Lichtman said, turning out in “decent numbers,” voting overwhelmingly for Obama. This cohort identifies less than any other group as Republicans, an identification that he said is likely to persist far beyond the 2008 election.

Menachem Rosensaft, a New York lawyer and pro-Obama blogger, said that more ethnic Americans see Obama — whose father was Kenyan — as a reflection of the immigrant, not the African-American experience and “consciously or subconsciously identify with him. His multiethnic background is very much in keeping with the Democratic coalition as it is emerging. Obama has more in common with Mario Cuomo than with Jesse Jackson.”

Many Jewish voters share that perception, he said.

Democratic pollster Mark Mellman said other voter groups are becoming more like Jewish voters because of the GOP’s “culture wars” focus.

“What we’ve been seeing since 1992 is a gradually changing alignment based more on culture than on economics,” he said. “Jews remain among the most culturally progressive voters in the country; that makes the Democratic Party a natural home for most Jewish voters.”

Now, Mellman said, other groups — including Hispanics and other ethnic minorities, as well as more affluent and educated suburban voters — are starting to show a similar discomfort with the Republicans’ Christian right base and its social agenda.

“We’ve seen it over the course of several elections,” he said. “We’ve seen Virginia changing, and North Carolina, and Bergen County, New Jersey. It was just accelerated by the fact you had an extraordinarily appealing candidate in Barack Obama, the most unpopular incumbent president and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.”

But he warned that “we make a big mistake when we assume political changes are permanent. The truth is, voters have given the Democrats an opportunity to perform; how the new president and Congress perform will go a long way toward determining the outcome of the next few elections.”

Mik Moore, co-founder of the Jewish Council for Education and Research, a group created to reinforce Jewish ties to the Democrats, said Jews — early opponents of the religion-based culture wars — “helped move this political shift along. As the suburbs become more a part of the Democratic base, the Republicans are in real trouble.”

While liberal Jewish leaders applaud the emerging political shift, there are also risks to the Jewish community if it persists beyond this year’s election. One involves the parallel change in political funding.

While much of Obama’s record-shattering millions came from traditional Democratic sources, the campaign also tapped a vast pool of money through small, Internet-based donations.

That’s good for a Democratic Party that has often lagged behind the GOP in fundraising — but could undercut a source of Jewish political clout.

“When you can raise many millions of dollars on the Internet, through small contributions, you aren’t nearly as reliant on the party’s big givers,” said a top Jewish Democrat who asked that his name not be used. “Many of those big givers are Jewish, and it’s been an important factor in the development of Jewish political muscle over the years.”

The emerging Democratic coalition — and a Republican Party that is likely to follow the same fundraising path — could ultimately offset the way the Jewish community has leveraged its status as a small minority into heavy political clout by using campaign finance, this activist said.

There’s also the question of sheer numbers: the rising importance of other minority groups in the Democratic Party means “we are numerically less important,” said the source. “That not necessarily because of decreased Jewish participation; it may also be the result of a much higher turnout from other groups.”

And if the new Democratic coalition does move in a more liberal direction, there could be pushback from groups that believe — incorrectly, according to last week’s exit polls — that the Jewish community has abandoned its progressive Democratic roots.

Vic Rosenthal of Jewish Community Action in Minneapolis said that “there is a perception among many of the people we work with that Jews are no longer part of this coalition because of the strong support for Israel.”

That view, he said, is fostered by a Jewish leadership that seems to focus only on Israel and on anti-Semitism, at the expense of domestic issues and traditional coalition politics.

But Rabbi Marc Schneier said the emerging coalition that cuts across age, class and ethnic lines is a potential source of strength for the Jewish community.

“The Jewish community has a noble tradition of building bridges and alliances,” he said. “And we are at a point where we can’t fight our battles alone. But the door swings both ways. We have to reach out to these communities to sensitize them to our core issues, as well as understanding their core issues. That is the making of a true partnership.”