New York has more Jews than any place outside Israel. It’s one of the few places with enough Jews for them to show up as a distinct group in polls and surveys.
In the latest Siena College poll, Jews expressed their opinion about Senator Bernie Sanders.14% of white voters in New York chose Sanders, as did 14% of black voters and 18% of Latino voters.
15% of Catholics support Bernie. So do 9% of Protestants. As do 24% in the nebulous 'other' category which can include everyone from atheists to Muslims.
But only 4% of Jews do.
To put this into perspective, there is no group in New York of any race, color, creed or religion with whom the former Brooklynite performs as badly as he does with the Jews. Far more black voters support Bernie than Kamala Harris and Cory Booker. But the Jews don’t care for him at all.
15% of self-described conservatives support him.
And yet only 4% of Jews are prepared to vote for Bernie Sanders.
These numbers may only be from New York, but they're not an outlier. A Morning Consult poll back in May saw 17% of Catholics, 12% of Protestants, 30% of atheists, 24% of agnostics, and only 11% of Jews supporting the socialist pol. Even nationally, Protestants are more likely than Jews to vote Bernie.
Back in July, The Forward noted that Jews formed the smallest part of Bernie’s donor base compared to most other candidates.
Meanwhile in New York, where his support among Jews ought to be strongest, it’s weakest.
Even as Bernie waxes nostalgic about playing stickball in Brooklyn and pores over the immigration records of his ancestors provided by helpful reporters trying to make the naked socialist emperor seem more likeable, the Jews of Brooklyn would rather vote for anyone than Bernie.
How can that be?
For one thing, New York Jews are a lot less radical than the stereotype on both sides would have it.
The same poll that has Bernie Sanders coming in at 4% also shows that 44% of Jewish voters in New York have a favorable opinion of President Trump. Although only a third (33%) intend to vote to reelect him.
That’s around the same number (34%) who rate him as doing a good job.
Those numbers may not seem great, but they show that a larger number of Jews like Trump personally than support him politically. That flies in the face of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
It’s also New York.
Jewish favorable ratings for Trump tie Catholic numbers and are higher than Protestant numbers.
More Jews in New York rate President Trump positively than white voters in general.
Why are President Trump’s favorable ratings among Jews in New York higher than among other white people? And why is Bernie Sanders’ support so achingly low among that same demographic?
The obvious answer is Israel.
President Trump’s pro-Israel policies have obviously made inroads among Jews. Even when they haven’t led to direct support, they have made Jews like him more. Even as the media demonizes him.
Bernie Sanders has run as the unabashedly anti-Israel candidate. He has surrounded himself with anti-Semitic figures like Linda Sarsour. His campaign chief, who managed an anti-Semitic blog, has been accused of helping raise money for Hamas. When Rep. Omar made anti-Semitic comments, he took her side. When Rep. Omar and Rep. Tlaib were barred from Israel, he rushed to MSNBC to harangue Israel.
"The idea that a member of the United States Congress cannot visit a nation which by the way we support to the tune of billions and billions of dollars is clearly an outrage," Sanders ranted.
That’s the same sort of rhetoric you hear from anti-Israel activists and Neo-Nazis.
Jews were listening.
They were listening when he falsely accused Israel of killing “over 10,000 innocent people” during its conflict with Hamas. Instead of apologizing to the Jewish community, that became one of a series of Sanders smears of Israel for daring to defend itself against Hamas terrorism.
They were listening when he compared his activism to that of anti-Semitic British leftist Jeremy Corbyn.
They noticed when his illegal alien press secretary, Belen Sisa, posted that, the “American-Jewish community has a dual allegiance to the state of Israel” and went unpunished.
And they’ve listened in the past when he called for a ban on arms sales to Israel before the Yom Kippur War, when he backed Jesse Jackson despite his anti-Semitic ‘Hymietown’ slur, and stood with Communist and Marxist regimes from the USSR to Nicaragua that were oppressing Jews.
When Jews look at Bernie Sanders, they see more than the Brooklyn accent, the radical politics and the rumpled appearance. Instead they see in him and his politics an even more familiar type.
The self-hating Jew.
Bernie’s hostility to Israel and his eagerness to befriend anti-Semites from Jesse Jackson to Jeremy Corbyn to Al Sharpton to Rep. Ilhan Omar stems from his obvious discomfort with his family’s Jewish roots and his own dislike of Jews and Jewishness. Sanders hasn’t even made a token effort to reach the Jewish community. In sharp contrast to his outreach to the Latino community, black voters, LGBTQers and Islamists, his outreach to Jews has wavered between the insulting and the non-existent.
His 2016 Jewish outreach coordinator, Simone Zimmerman, was an anti-Israel activist whose hate group, IfNotNow, is frequently in the news for targeting Jewish groups. Who’s handling Jewish outreach now?
Good question.
An unofficial Jews for Bernie page was last updated in June. It’s filled with anti-Israel rants from the IfNotNow hate group. And it links to a JewsforBernie.com site that doesn’t actually exist.
That dead link is a fitting metaphor for Bernie’s Jewish support and his connection to Jews.
But, why bother? Jews won’t vote for him anyway. And he doesn’t actually want their votes.
That 4% represents the mutual distaste between Bernie Sanders and the Jews.
Bernie Sanders doesn’t like Jews. And Jews don’t like him. Sanders is the ‘Jewface’ that an anti-Semitic movement of radical leftists, identity politics nationalists and Islamists wears when it attacks Jews.
While his media fan club markets his accent and his resemblance to Larry David, as if these things mean anything other than an accident of birth, actual Jews don’t like him and won’t support him.
Last week, some Jewish high school students were discussing the 2020 Democrats. They’re not old enough to vote, but old enough to know their own minds.
“Bernie,” one of them said, “is a Jew who hates Jews.”
The teenage boy who said it was only half right. Bernie hates Jews. But there’s nothing inwardly Jewish about him. And yet those words capture what many Jews instinctively feel about Bernie Sanders.
It’s also why, President Trump’s favorability among New York Jews ties his national average.
President Trump likes Jews. Has a Jewish family. And is pro-Israel. He’s the opposite of Bernie Sanders.
American Jews often vote stupidly. But they’re not as stupid as the Left thinks. These numbers ought to serve as a warning that the Corbynization of the Democrats will see them lose their Jewish support.
A Jewish exodus from the Democrats can happen.
Just ask Bernie Sanders and his 4%.
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.
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