After All the Mishegoss, Can Harris Get the Jewish Vote She Needs?

It’s no secret that this past year has not been good for America’s Jews. It hasn’t been a party for America in general, either. We’ve got a presidential election coming up where, as David Frum tweeted, we are apparently “seriously considering becoming the first country in history to go fascist in conditions of peace and prosperity.” One can say a great deal about various forms of fascism as they have manifested themselves in different countries at different times. But one constant is unavoidable: It’s never good for the Jews.

Back in the mid-1960s, the much-admired German-born Jewish theologian Emil Fackenheim enunciated what has become the unofficial but widely accepted “614th Commandment” (or “mitzvah”) to be added to the 613 from the Torah already followed by religious Jews. It was that Jews must “deny Hitler any posthumous victories.” And yet Donald Trump, who has gone so far as to not only praise Hitler but befriend his admirers and even pronounce Hitler-like threats to Jews should he lose the election, is, according to polls, doing better with Jews than any Republican has in a long time.

Obviously, given Trump’s consistent indulgence in antisemitic tropes and dog whistles, together with the longtime commitment of conservative politicians, and, more recently, the Republican Party itself to these same tactics, Jews should be flocking to Harris and the Democrats in greater numbers than ever; especially when one factors in the prospect of her proudly Jewish husband, Doug Emhoff, sleeping beside her in the White House. 

Yes, Jews remain among the most reliable Democratic voters of any ethnicity aside from Black Americans. But the margins are not those we have consistently seen in the past. According to the most recent and reliable poll, published in the Forward, just 62 percent of Jewish adults who plan to vote in November said they’ll vote for Harris. At this point, she may end up with the lowest margin for a Democratic presidential candidate among Jews since Michael Dukakis back in 1988. Most Democratic presidential candidates get close to or north of 70 percent—Joe Biden got 68 percent, and Hillary Clinton 71 percent.

One can point to a number of potential explanations for this. Despite American Jews’ reputation for liberalism, at least a quarter have long been conservatives. This is true especially of Orthodox Jews, whose number has been rapidly increasing in recent times, both in real terms and especially as a percentage of American Jews. (The Satmar Jewish community of Kiryas Joel in upstate New York—a solid bloc vote if ever there were one—recently endorsed Donald Trump for president.)

What’s more, there’s been an explosion of right-wing Jewish media in recent times, including Tablet, Jewish Insider, the extremely popular Ben Shapiro Show, as well as right-wing Jewish-adjacent media like virtually the entire Murdoch empire and Bari Weiss’s Free Press. These publications, like many of their funders, care a great deal more about Israel than they do about antisemitism: Indeed, the latter, in their words and posts, is often used as a false accusation against anyone who harshly criticizes any actions by the Jewish state.

Israel has become almost exclusively a conservative cause. While most Jews prioritize other issues in the voting booth, a significant number remain willing to outsource their opinions to whoever speaks for the Israeli government at any given time. Today that is clearly Donald Trump. Israel was the only putatively democratic nation that preferred Trump to Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Biden. Today, according to a mid-September poll, 58 percent of Israelis questioned would vote for Trump if given the chance, with just 25 percent choosing Harris. Trump is considerably less crazy than usual when he brags that “I could run for prime minister [of Israel] and get 97 percent of the vote.”

Today, Trump boasts that he talks regularly with Bibi Netanyahu and urges him to do whatever he pleases in Gaza and the West Bank. He uses the word “Palestinian” as an insult. At his recent Nazi-style rally at Madison Square Garden, his surrogate Rudy Giuliani insisted that Palestinians were “taught to kill Americans at [age] 2.” Harris’s record of support for Israel is nearly spotless—indeed, for many progressives, far too much so since Israel’s Gaza assault, when Harris has refused to break from Biden’s remarkably indulgent policies. But as those in the “pro-Israel” community judge these things, her rhetoric is a little too sympathetic to the Palestinians for complete comfort.

Seth Mandel, the rabid right-wing editor of Commentary, complains that Harris and her team employ an “antagonistic tone toward Israel.” His evidence? When speaking of the more than 42,000 people killed in Israel’s attack on Gaza in the wake of the October 7, 2023, massacre, she says things like: “The images of dead children and desperate, hungry people.… We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies.… We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent.”

We hear a great deal about the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, but right-wing Jews are at least as excited about its cousin, “Project Esther,” presented on the anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack. Like the mainstream legacy Jewish organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League, or ADL, AIPAC, and the American Jewish Committee, the 33-page report treats anti-Zionism as identical to antisemitism and demands—as Trump has done—that colleges crack down on anti-Israel protests, which it claims to be part of a “global Hamas Support Network (HSN).”

In fact, the majority of American Jews are increasingly uncomfortable with Israel’s actions, both in Gaza and the West Bank. This explains what would otherwise appear to be a contradiction noted in the Forward survey, which explains that American Jews think Harris would handle the Israel-Hamas war better than Trump by a hefty 54 to 36 percent. However, most also see Trump as more supportive of Israel. The plurality of Jews polled wish that the United States would “support Israelis and Palestinians equally,” as compared to the 31 percent who think “it should mostly support Israelis” and the 24 percent who think “it should only support Israelis” (6 percent said it should support the Palestinians).  

Rhetorically, Harris has been forced to walk a tightrope between attempting to hold onto pro-Israeli Jews and pro-Palestinian Muslims, (often Jewish) leftists, and just about anyone else who is understandably horrified by what Israel has done and continues to do in Gaza, in Lebanon, and in the West Bank, to name just three of the six places Israel has found itself at war in recent months. In most election years, this grouping would be negligible in number, as would American Jews—at least as a voting bloc.

But this election is coming down to a handful of toss-up states where the margins are expected to be razor-thin. In one of the biggest, Michigan, Muslims and Arab Americans represent roughly 3 percent of the population, and many seem determined to punish Harris for Biden’s policies, regardless of the fact that Trump will be much, much worse. In Pennsylvania, Jews represent roughly the same percentage of the voting population. They may not vote exclusively on Israel, but many are on edge about (often exaggerated) reports of a massive spike in antisemitism and encampment on elite college campuses where the word “Zionist” has become a term of opprobrium.

Harris has sought to thread this rhetoric needle, with promises like that made at her convention speech: “I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself. Because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that the terrorist organization Hamas caused on October 7.”

At the same time, she has tried to signal her sympathy for what the Palestinians in Gaza are experiencing, associate herself obliquely with Biden’s so-far failed efforts to convince Bibi Netanyahu to make a cease-fire deal that would free the remaining hostages held by Hamas, and bring some stability to a region that presently teeters on the edge of complete conflagration.

She has used her Jewish husband as a political surrogate to address Republican “I’m rubber, but you’re glue” attacks on alleged antisemitism staining Democratic candidates. Speaking on Monday, a day after the sixth anniversary of the shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history, Emhoff promised his audience, “She feels what you and I and Jews across America are feeling today,” he said. “She gets it.” Using a favorite term for politicians speaking to Jewish audiences, he insisted that “Kamala feels it, as we say, in her kishkes.” 

Thing is, as recent events at The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times have demonstrated, Trump’s promises to rule as a lawless, vindictive dictator, coupled with the fact nobody knows whether he might win, has spooked a great many people in politics. Those Jews who take their cues from the professional Jewish organizations that profess to speak to them can hardly be said to be getting a clear message on the threat Trump presents to all of us.

In a rather incredible turn of events to those familiar with Jewish politics, Abe Foxman, former longtime CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, called out his former colleagues for their cowardice. “There’s no question about it: For the American Jewish Committee, the ADL, Conference of Presidents, the federations, all these institutes,” he explained of the relative silence on Trump’s Nazi-style rally last Sunday, “if this happened six months ago, they would be out there condemning racism and antisemitism and hate speech,” he said. “Call it the Washington Post syndrome.”

Let’s hope it doesn’t last past Tuesday.