Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff speaks to Jewish voters during a rally for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential campaign at the Sheet Metal Workers Local 80 in Southfield, Michigan last Sunday. Photo by Getty Images

By Arno Rosenfeld October 29, 2024

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff delivered a major address on antisemitism in Pittsburgh last night, trying to convince Jewish swing voters in Pennsylvania that his wife, Vice President Kamala Harris, is a safer choice for them than former President Donald Trump.

Despite Trump’s various offensive comments about Jews, a recent poll of Jewish voters by the conservative Manhattan Institute found that, among the 15% who identified as independents, 44% thought Republicans were better on “security, Israel and antisemitism,” compared to 35% who preferred Democrats.

I have a few thoughts about why this might be, including:

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• Trump and his allies might say bad things about Jews, but the left is largely responsible for the vitriolic demonstrations against Israel over the past year that some Jews believe have demonized the community.
• Some believe that diversity, equity and inclusion policies in workplaces and universities, which are generally supported by Democrats, are fueling antisemitism on the left; the poll found 34% of independent Jewish voters believe that DEI increased antisemitism.
• Many Jews spend time in liberal spaces, including college campuses, so rising antisemitism among progressives may feel more direct and destabilizing than antisemitism among conservatives.
• When it comes to policy, Trump promises uncritical support for Israel and a crackdown on what conservative policymakers close to his campaign call the domestic “Hamas Support Network” and blame for the campus protests and rise in antisemitism.

How can Harris win over these voters? Her husband’s approach last night in Pittsburgh was to try to meet them where they are. So while Emhoff criticized Trump’s reported praise for Nazi generals and allegations of Jewish disloyalty, he also accepted the premise that Trump has aligned himself with the Jews — before cautioning this was no true friendship.

“If it suited his selfish interests, Trump would turn his back on Israel and the Jewish people on a dime. He would do it whenever antisemitism rears its ugly head in this country,” Emhoff said. “We should never have to wonder where our government stands.”

Emhoff, who has served as the senior surrogate to American Jews for this campaign, has been careful not to say much about where he thinks criticism of Israel intersects with antisemitism. But he used the speech to imply that Trump might be responsible even for left-wing antisemitism that has spread since he departed the White House: “It’s no coincidence that things have gotten worse for American Jews since Trump entered politics — just as they have for so many,” he said.

Emhoff argued that Trump is “an agent of chaos and cruelty” and “whenever chaos and cruelty are given a green light, Jew-hatred is historically not far behind.”

“Chaos and cruelty” could describe not only the neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville, but also the anonymous vandals who defaced the homes of the Brooklyn Museum’s Jewish director with the symbol Hamas uses to mark its military targets.

It’s a framework that seeks to reorient blame for rising antisemitism from, say, a progressive policy like DEI or Harris’ sympathetic statements about the Gaza protest movement, to Trump’s shattering of taboos and political norms that once kept radicals on both the right and left in tighter check.

Exit polls next week should tell us whether it worked.

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