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In a recent interview, Rep. Steve King of Iowa said:

I dont understand how Jews in America can be Democrats first and Jewish second and support Israel along the line of just following their president.

Steve King has questions. We have answers.

I turned to the political scientist Kenneth Wald, who is the distinguished professor of political science and Samuel R. Bud Shorstein Professor of American Jewish Culture & Society at the University of Florida. He is also the author of the newly published article The Choosing People: The Puzzling Politics of American Jewry. He graciously responded to some questions via e-mail. Below is a lightly edited version:

Q: The title of your article refers to the puzzling politics of American Jewry. So what is puzzling about their politics?

In their voting behavior, political identity and attitudes, American Jews are disproportionately clustered on the liberal/Democratic side of the political spectrum. The pattern has held more or less steady since the late 1920s. But we expect most affluent people to favor the party of the right. As a group, even allowing for individual differences, American Jews rank at or near the top on most measures of social class education, income, occupational prestige and such. That makes their commitment to the Democratic party and liberal values puzzling.

Q: Your argument discounts explanations that depend on the distinctive aspects of Judaism. For example, you say that its not that Jewish values promote liberalism, or that liberals have historically been more accepting of Jews, or that Jews tend to make common cause with other socially marginalized groups on the left, like blacks. Whats wrong with those explanations?

I criticize what I call Judaic theories that emphasize Jewish values, Jewish historical experience, and minority consciousness as the cause of this liberal/Democratic skew among American Jews. I dont mean to deny that one can interpret Judaism as intrinsically left-liberal or read the historical record to conclude that liberals have historically been supportive of Jewish aspirations, or that having been a stigmatized minority may engender Jewish empathy with other oppressed groups.

But these explanations dont help us explain political differences among Jews across countries or over time. American Jews share a religious tradition, historical inheritance, and minority status with most Jewish communities around the globe and yet only Jews in the United States are concentrated on the left. Jews outside the U.S. are sometimes centrist, sometimes rightist, and occasionally indistinct from the general population, but never as tightly clustered on the left as American Jews.

And if, as these theories presuppose, liberalism is intrinsic in the Jewish experience, how can we explain short-term fluctuations in American Jewish political behavior? Judaic theories are universal and static, so they cannot account for American Jewish political exceptionalism nor the oscillations in American Jewish voting patterns.

Continued here:
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