At risk of losing my blogger’s license, today’s discussion is on politics. I’m not going to discuss whether or not the results are “good” or “bad” on any level, but I did notice two ironic results. The first was picked up by The Daily Show in their election recap. The Bush camp claimed that John Kerry was soft on terrorism and would be too weak of a leader. Despite these accusations, Kerry easily carried New York, the state most directly affected by the 9/11 attacks.
Similarly, Kerry attacked Bush’s economic policies which supposedly cost jobs while giving tax breaks to the wealthy. However, as Nicholas Kristoff mourns, Bush carried all the “middle America” hard working states.
It could be that the candidate’s directed their messages to the wrong people – in the sense that they weren’t able to change the people’s minds. Or, you could say that they simply sold their positions to whomever wished to hear them.
Anyway, I’m also interested in the role religion played in people’s decisions. Between the left-leaning liberal Jews and R. Eliyashiv’s pesak to vote for Bush, I’ve gotten several IM’s asking for my opinions. Maybe for when I get back to Chicago.
(כִּי לֹא מַחְשְׁבוֹתַי מַחְשְׁבוֹתֵיכֶם וְלֹא דַרְכֵיכֶם דְּרָכָי (ישעיהו נה:ח
YUTOPIA’s Election Recap 2004
November 4, 2004 Politics
“Anyway, I’m also interested in the role religion played in people’s decisions.”
Republican rural turnout was huge, largely due to people’s religious opposition to gay marriage (and, in many states, civil unions.) The Republicans have found one more group of people to villify in order to secure the bigot vote. There is as of yet no MLK for gay people to counter-balance the religious voices on the right. Also, the stem-cell and abortion issues were obviously a factor.
Frum Jews voted Bush mostly due to Israel, IMO, apparently trusting ideology (Bush is “good for Israel”) more than facts (Israel has suffered more during Bush’s tenure than it did during Clinton’s and Bush has done nothing to ameliorate the situation.) Like many Americans who voted Bush because they’d rather have a strong response than a correct one, many frum Jews prefer a “strong” Bush than one more likely to actually help Israel resolve its horrible situation. Rabbis have no business issuing psak on politics — it’s not their area of expertise.
I can’t comment on the anti-gay issue or the religious motivations behind it.
You do raise an interesting point of ideology vs. facts, but in this age, there is so much information and misinformation that even one were to have all “facts” they can be spun in so many different ways such that your statement “rael has suffered more during Bush’s tenure than it did during Clinton’s” is equally a matter of perspective.
I was thinking more of how people come to the conclusing that Jews should be voting for X. One Revel prof of mine once said that he doesn’t know how one can be an orthodox jew and be a republican.
It is my impression that Rav Elyashiv did not realize that his statement would be publicized and was upset by that development.
You will certainly not lose your blog license for discussing politics. In fact, the conventional wisdom is that political blogs — especially highly partisan ones — tend to be more widely read, even to the point of (gasp) generating ad revenue.
My two cents is worth somewhat less than two cents, but here it is, in any event. Without intending to cast aspersions anywhere in particular, I think you’re far too intellectually honest and consistent to dwell on current political discourse for too long.
It seems to me even from this one brief post that you ascribe more intellectual (and even ideological) content to both Democratic and Republican positions than actually exists. My educated guess at the reason for the apparent disconnects from the candidates’ “messages” that you identify is fairly straightforward. A strategic mix of soundbites is, well, just that. The “messages” are so intensely “narrowcast” to niche audiences that there simply is no overall coherence.
Worse still, the broader principles that ostensibly make up party platforms are in need of serious re-examination on both sides. This is unlikely to happen, though. Instead, we’ll get more punch lists of “hot button” issues that literally came straight out of the same kinds of focus groups used to create new snack foods. The results will be similar: junk.
Okay, rant over.