Look, lemmings!

Jewish voters — 2 percent of the electorate today — went heavily for Obama: 78 percent to 21 percent.  I always found Jews' allegiance to the Democratic party odd, both for demographic reasons and due to the Democrats' less favorable treatment of Israel compared to that of Republicans.

I guess I'm not alone.  Harsh words from Omri Ceren:

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Any honest person who says that Obama will be anything but a disaster for the US-Israel alliance is either a breathtaking idiot or in willful denial. If American Jews have any decency, they'll at least spare everyone their pathetic "we couldn't have known" hand-wringing when Obama's foreign policy turns out to be exactly what his top advisers promise. But given their behavior during this election, I'm not hopeful.

The North American Jewish Data Bank - the central repository of social scientific studies about North American Jewry - just put out a new survey about Jewish-American voting patterns. Tell me if I'm overreaching, but in what way aren't these numbers scientific proof that Democratic Jews are retarded?

If the undecided voters split as expected, Jews will vote for Obama around 17 percentage points more than other Americans, and about 30 percentage points more than other white Americans... While [Jewish Americans'] political views tending in the liberal direction help explain their support for Obama, and their concern for Israel may actually pull them in the other direction, political views alone cannot explain their high levels of Democratic vote intention. Neither can the major socio-demographic variables. Rather, their vote intentions are a product of their political identities – their long-standing association with the liberal camp and the Democratic Party. These results speak to the power of political identity as a driving force behind Jewish vote intentions and political activity more generally. Values and interests alone cannot explain why Jews will be voting so heavily for Obama on November 4. Rather, for Jews, as for other Americans, electoral behavior is very much a reflection of political identities as Democrats or Republicans, and as liberals or conservatives. Ironically, Jews and other highly educated voters often view other Americans as responding to instinctual, historic habits, to their political heritage, if you will. People like to think of themselves as totally rational and driven by carefully considered values. In fact, Jews in the upcoming election also respond to their identities. In their case, they will be reflecting their long-held, multi-generation attachment to the liberal camp in America, and to the Democratic Party.

Just so everybody's on the same page: every variable that we know how to measure indicates that American Jews should be trending rightward. Political views. Values and interests. Major socio-demographic variables. Everything. There's only one explanation for astronomically high Jewish-American Democratic voting: these tools are voting for Democrats simply because that's what they've always done. They tell themselves that it's because they're more sophisticated than everybody else. They "think of themselves as totally rational and driven by carefully considered values." But it's nothing except force of habit insulated by obnoxious pretension.

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And yet, vote for Obama they did.  The candidate that...

...scares AIPAC. 

...opposes the security fence.

...has a wide circle of anti-Semitic spiritual advisers.

Jump, lemmings, jump!

And yes, for those of you who grew up in the 80s, it's available online!