Comment on PJM, Ed Driscoll: Exit To Sweden

Exit To Sweden

To call Reform Judaism "The Democratic Party at prayer" is to play off of the chestnut that the Anglican Church is the Tory Party at prayer. Podhoretz knows that, and if anyone can help me since I am drawing a blank on who first came up with the line they would have my gratitude. Remember that the aphorism actually proves that clever as such an association may be to a raconteur it is of low predictive value. The current Anglican Church is well to the left of even the current, liberal by American standards, Conservatives in the UK. There is no reason to assume that Jews as a community could not also shift positions in this case to the Right or respond to a leftward drift on the part of the Democrats. Institutions change, it is more interesting to study why they change at different rates. The FDR coalition of Jews, Blacks, Catholics, and Socialists, has endured to a remarkable degree for over 75 years. It has survived despite having been proven to be false in its theoretical assumptions and ineffective in delivering the services promised. The loyalty to the party has united urban Blacks and unionized Jewish schoolteachers, White steel workers and Latino immigrants, Multi-millionaire capitalists or trust fund babies and unskilled clerical workers or semi-skilled advocacy agents. In most cases the real interests of these groups diverge. For over three generations they have ignored those interests and serially focused on the image of Herbert Hoover and the Rethuglicans coming to steal their birthdays.

The ultimate personification of the current Democratic Party is Anthony Weiner, who represents middle class Jews and poor blacks while getting married to Hillary Clinton's Saudi Arabian girlfriend. This contraption cannot continue to run simply on inertia. When groups bolt they may do so suddenly and en masse, as many of their great-grandparents did in the other direction.