After New York, a Need for Healing : Dukakis Must Reunite Key Democrats--Blacks and Jews

The impressive victory of Michael Dukakis in the New York primary Tuesday has moved him past the halfway mark in the number of delegates required to win the Democratic nomination.

Barring some unforeseen event, he will accomplish that. But leaving behind the disputatious sectarian politics of New York and its shrill and divisive mayor, Edward I. Koch, does not mean that the tensions that surfaced in that state between two key elements of the Democratic constituency have been laid to rest.

Only a relationship deeply troubled before the New York primary could have degenerated so quickly and acrimoniously once the campaign got under way. The presumptive Democratic nominee may find that the ultimate test of his political skill and wisdom is healing the dangerous rift in the relationship between blacks and Jews.

Their combined numbers do not add up to a majority of the Democratic electorate, but the concentration of blacks and Jews in populous states with large numbers of electoral votes magnifies the importance of these two groups for the party’s nominee. But it is not even the strategic placement of the two groups that makes them so important for the Democrats. Rather, it is what they represent within the party.

Whatever form and structure the Democratic Party has enjoyed over the past half century has been provided by the New Deal coalition. These were the groups who rallied to the banner of Franklin D. Roosevelt and which, for a variety of reasons, remained associated with the party, voting more or less consistently Democratic in national elections.

To win the presidency, Democratic nominees had to run well among white Southerners, blue-collar Catholics, blacks and Jews. But over the course of years, the reliability of the first two elements in the coalition declined. White Southerners began to use ideology rather than partisanship as a yardstick by which to measure candidates. The most conservative nominee of whatever party increasingly claimed the loyalties of whites in Dixie. Catholic voters, as they prospered economically, drifted out of the Democratic ranks.

The void left by the defection of these two groups was filled partially by newly enfranchised black voters of the South and the continued loyalty of urban blacks. The upward mobility of Jews did not seem to affect their political fidelity to the Democrats. This trait they shared with the blacks. For both groups, voting Democratic was a sacrament that was celebrated both in adversity and prosperity.

But it is odd that the embittered relations between blacks and Jews should be lamented as a divorce between natural allies. Other than the common bond of being persecuted minorities, the natural affinity between blacks and Jews is a no more natural one than, for example, between blacks and Armenians or Jews and American Indians. Indeed, given the histories of both groups and the conditions under which blacks and Jews were thrown together in the great cities of America and the natural rivalries generated by that contact, it is a tribute to the political genius of the New Deal that they were brought together at all.

Discrimination fell differentially on blacks and Jews. Blacks suffered all of the indignities heaped on Jews. But there was an additional dimension of violence in the persecution visited on the blacks. Restricted in where they could live and in the employment to which they could aspire, Jews were often forced to become what the Marxists call a comprador class of ghetto merchants and landlords. At the street level, it was often not a very happy relationship. But at the leadership level, relations were almost benevolent.

The civil-rights battle of the 1950s and 1960s strengthened the bond between blacks and Jews. Yet this tendency produced a paradoxical backlash as the civil-rights movement evolved into the black-power movement of the 1970s. Some black spokesmen came to see Jewish involvement in civil-rights activities as a form of patronizing control.

Even events abroad conspired against the old partnership. The 1973 Yom Kippur war saw the states of Africa, to which black Americans felt an increasing attachment, lining up with the Arabs. Increasingly isolated in the world, Israel moved closer to South Africa, a pariah state in the eyes of the blacks. The rise of articulate American black leaders who had embraced Islam was another wedge in driving blacks and Jews apart.

Yet while the black-Jewish relationship may be less natural than some people think, it is nonetheless a politically important one for the Democrats. The numbers tell only part of the story of why this is so. Jews are among the most politically active Americans. Their energy, resources and commitment are an essential fixture in Democratic politics. The role of blacks is equally important. They are the most loyal of all Democrats. Without their votes the South is beyond the reach of any Democratic nominee. They are an increasingly influential force in the labor unions. Enmity between these loyal and steady Democrats would be a disaster for the party.

While the personal agenda of Jesse Jackson will have much to do with the future course of black-Jewish relations in the Democratic Party, there is much that Michael Dukakis could do to reduce the antagonism between these two key constituencies. In modern politics, only the presidential nominee enjoys the prestige to broker differences among his followers, and it will be up to Dukakis to emphasize what is essential to both groups and limit the sources of irritation.

Strange bedfellows blacks and Jews may be. But unless they lie down together in tolerant repose in 1988, the Democratic household will endure strife and experience defeat.