Comment: Steve, have you ever read about this? It was a mini-scandal in Los Angeles back in 1988. Memos leaked to the L.A. Times revealed that two Jewish political consultants gave a Jewish city councilman running for mayor some frank advice on how to defeat Tom Bradley.
One of the frankest parts of the memos urged Yaroslavsky to capitalize on his close ties with the Jewish community to raise money.
The two advisers said they were not fund-raising experts, “but what we do know is that Jewish wealth in Los Angeles is endless. That almost every Jewish person who meets you will like you and that asking for $2,000 is not an unreasonable request to people who are both wealthy and like you.” At one point, the memo said, “The Yaroslavsky campaign becomes the United Jewish appeal.”
[…]
[Republicans who voted for Bradley] are racially tolerant people who are strongly pulled to Bradley because of his height, skin color and calm demeanor. They like voting for him–they feel less guilty about how little they used to pay their household help.
“To beat Bradley, you must be intensely, thoroughly and totally committed to your vision of L.A.,” they said. “It is the way you overcome the racial tug many Jews and non-Jewish liberals feel toward Bradley. It is also the way you overcome the possible Republican preference for the conservative black over the Jewish kid friendly with the Waxman-Berman machine.”
The consultants dwelt at length on the politics of blacks and Jews, major political forces in the city. “Bradley can and will excite black voters to outvote the white electorate especially if there is a runoff where his mayoral office is seen as jeopardized by a perfidious Jew, and/or most Jews and tree huggers will be, simultaneously, happy with both alternatives or distraught with having to choose between the two alternatives and therefore will turn out at their normal rates.”
(A few months later, Yaroslavsky dropped out of the race.)
Shades of the ’16 Democratic primaries: Hillary, the (honorary) black candidate, the heroic defender of Obama’s legacy, excites more black voters than Bernie, the (perfidious?) Jew.
And how many moderate white voters were TelePrompted to vote for Obama in ’08 because he was a tall, soothing, non-threatening black man with an Ivy League pedigree?
