|
|
|
|
|
|
Resources |
|
|
|
Blacks, Jews and the Transformation of American Liberalism
| Article
# : |
15622 |
|
|
Section : |
BOOK WORLD
|
| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1989 |
4,008 Words |
| Author
: |
Larry D. Nachman
Larry D. Nachman is professor of political science at the
College of Staten Island, CUNY, and is a frequent contributor
to Commentary and Salmagundi. He is completing a book on
psychoanalysis and social theory. |
BROKEN ALLIANCE
The Turbulent Times Between Blacks and Jews in America
Jonathan Kaufman
New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1988
311 pp., $19.95
Another Presidential election has come and gone. For the fifth time in the last six elections, American voters have emphatically rejected the opportunity of placing a liberal in the White House. As various economic, social, and ethnic groups have moved toward the Republican column, once again, as Jesse Jackson noted frequently in the campaign, no group has been more loyal to the Democratic Party than blacks. And once again a majority of Jews voted for a Democratic president, although it is at least as noteworthy that a sizable minority of Jews continued to vote Republican. These latter Jews have broken with long-standing patterns of Jewish political behavior, patterns that, throughout the democratic world, laced Jews toward the left of the political spectrum.
This retreat of the American voter from liberalism is all the more striking when one remembers that it was not so long ago that liberalism dominated American politics. The 1964 election seemed to consummate a generation of the dominance, as liberalism gained its greatest electoral victory and conservatism suffered its greatest electoral defeat. I remember hearing shortly after that election the analysis of a distinguished political scientist who thought that there was a possibility that the Republican Party might vanish from the political scene in the aftermath of a predictable Johnson reelection in 1968. He thought it likely, in that event, that
... (1998 of 22753 Characters)
Read Full Article
|
|
