Lucy Gellman Photo
Sanders at a get-out-the-vote rally in Keene, N.H.
How come nobody’s mentioning that for first time in U.S. history, a Jewish candidate — Democrat Bernie Sanders — won a presidential primary Tuesday night?And does Donald Trump’s similarly “huge” victory in the Republican primary signal a fascist turn in American politics?
A team of veteran political pundits chewed over those questions in a special edition of WNHH radio’s “Dateline New Haven” the day after the New Hampshire presidential primary, in which outsiders Sanders and Trump won their parties’ races by more than 20 percentage points, and set the chattering classes on a figure-it-out frenzy.
Little to none of that discussion has touched on Sanders’ religious/ethnic first.
Paul Bass Photos
Wednesday pundits Mamis, Shiffrin, Dunleavy in the WNHH studio.
Mark Shiffrin — a New Haven attorney with a long history in Republican politics, including a stint as a deputy general counsel of the first Bush administration and a term as Connecticut’s consumer protection chief — argued on “Dateline” that that’s because the country has changed: Anti-Semitism isn’t as common as it once was.
Shiffrin, who’s Jewish, noted that Republican candidate Ted Cruz has an Orthodox Jew as a top campaign aide. (Fellow GOP hopeful Marco Rubio’s campaign is supported by prominent Jewish donors with conservative Super PACs.)
Two other “Dateline panelists — Love 146 marketing and media strategist Joshua Mamis, a journalist who covered Sanders when Sanders served as mayor of Burlington, Vermont; and veteran Democratic campaign worker Martin J. Dunleavy, who works as clerk of the state House of Representatives and as organizational director of the Franciscan Action Network — noted that Sanders doesn’t play up his religion. He doesn’t hide it; but he doesn’t identify as religiously observant. Mamis and Dunleavy suggested that fact may play a role in the lack of attention to Sanders’ milestone Tuesday night.
Shiffrin had a different take from the other two, as well as the program’s host (aka “me’), on whether Donald Trump’s campaign success to date has fascist overtones.
A transcript of that portion of the discussion follows:
Neo-Fascist?
Shiffrin: You watch [Trump] and you see an authenticity to what he expresses …
Bass: If it’s authentic — is authentic hate the value of the new Republican Party? When you have this many people going for a guy who says immigrants are rapists and murderers …
Mamis: … wants to kill the families of terrorists …
Bass: … and says he wants to bar Muslims [from entering the country]? Who encourages people to beat up protesters at his rallies? Is that the tolerant Republican Party?
Shiffrin: Do you think a third of the people who voted in the New Hampshire Republican primary for Trump were identifying with that? I would suspect that is not what they were identifying with.
Mamis: Do you think a third of the people who were voting in Germany were identifying with …
Dunleavy: … Let’s not go there.
Mamis: People see what they want to see.
Dunleavy: I think Donald Trump is a neo-fascist. I do. I think he’s authentic about being a neo-fascist, quite honestly. Do I think a third of the people there [voting for him in New Hampshire] would identify themselves that way? No. I think they’re being duped by a very charismatic speaker.
Mamis: That’s how these candidacies work. People don’t sit there at home spouting the same ideology. But they pretend that that’s not the part they’re attracted to. It’s an out.
Shiffrin: You don’t see a similar thing in the demagoguery of Sanders?
Mamis: I think there’s a really big difference. The media has equated what they see as the anger of Bernie and the anger of Trump as moral equivalents, and they’re far from it. Donald Trump is a bigot. He attacks Mexicans en masse. He attacks Muslims en masse. He makes fun of women for the way they look. Bernie Sanders’ anger is targeted at the breed of Wall Street, how they almost brought down the world economy, how they destroyed the lives of people every day, how they stopped for instance, creating stronger bankruptcy laws so they could make more money off the backs of poor people. Bernie has righteous indignation at the greed of Wall Street. Donald Trump is scapegoating entire groups of people for his own aggrandizement. They’re really different.
Dunleavy: There is a big similarity though. If you look at the economic and socioeconomic conditions of their voters, they’re very similar.
Bass: But they’re being appealed to in very different ways.
Dunleavy: I’m going to get to that. They are both populists. Trump on the far right, and Bernie on the left. They are both appealing to people who are lower socioeconomic level, lower education level, younger. Trump is starting to do very well with the young. This is very similar to the famous Indiana study in 1968 when [Democratic presidential primary candidate] Bobby Kennedy won white men in the primary, and George Wallace won the same group in the same [general] election.
Bass: And there are people who like Bernie and Trump.
Dunleavy: Right.
Bass: But let’s get back to Mark here. He didn’t get a chance to respond to what you two guys are saying.
Shiffrin: I don’t think that people are viewing Trump’s comments in the same way as they view comments by traditional politicians. Because I think he is being viewed more as an entertainment figure. I think he’s being given more of a pass in terms of what he says and how the voters are looking at it.
Bass: Josh’s response was that is how it begins. People get attracted to that anger and scapegoating. That’s what builds into fascism. We do see scenes now where [Trump] talks about beating up people, inciting the crowd to do that.
Shiffrin: I don’t think that getting to suggest that he is a fascist is really a [mistake]. I’m not defending Donald Trump …
Mamis: You could have fooled me.
Shiffrin: I am looking at the Trump supporters. I don’t think they’re parsing Donald Trump in the way you are framing the question.
Bass: Were the exit polls wrong to say that immigration was a leading reason they were voting for him?
Shiffrin: A lot of Republican candidates have taken stronger positions on immigration than the Democratic candidates. But Trump has been very blunt in his language and a very effective communicator. … I think the ceiling for Trump … is probably somewhere under 40 percent for primary voters.
Click on or download the above audio file to hear the entire discussion, which included predictions about the campaign moving forward. Subscribe to WNHH’s new podcast “Dateline New Haven,” where episodes of the show will be delivered directly to your phone or smart device. (Click here for details on how to subscribe.)
To listen to some of the voices from the Trump camp, click on or download the audio above.
I don't think media ignored the fact that Sanders is Jewish; they didn't. These days, I think it just isn't a big deal anymore. Plus, define "Jewish". Sanders has made it pretty clear that he is an atheist (he didn't use the word atheist but that's what his comments amount to). His Jewishness is more a cultural attribute and a matter of family history than a religious status. And we're forgetting about Joe Lieberman, who was the Democratic Party's nominee for VP, and that was over 15 years ago. And Lieberman was very religious, not only observant but from an orthodox background. I remember Lieberman's status as a Jew, and a religious Jew, was a big media story back then. So I think nowadays we're beyond it being big news when a "Jewish" person rises in party politics, especially when we've had Jewish senators, congressmen, and high-level cabinet members long before having a top-of-the party nominee. That it's largely a "who cares" thing is a good thing, no?