The Curse of Neglecting the Jews

Kamala Harris sidestepped a proudly Jewish and pro-Israel politician to be her vice president — and it cost her and the Democrats a pivotal U.S. election.

Despite overriding qualifications, U.S. Governor Josh Shapiro was not the Democratic Party’s vice presidential nominee probably because (at least in part) of his Jewishness and pro-Israel stance. (photo: Josh Shapiro/X)

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Jews have been neglected by many societies, to the latter’s detriment.

Spain’s Golden Age saw a flourishing of art, science, and intellectual pursuits, in large part due to the contributions of its Jewish community. Jews were prominent in medicine, philosophy, literature, and trade.

However, in 1492, the Spanish monarchy issued the Alhambra Decree, expelling all Jews from the country. As a result, Spain lost a highly educated, economically vital, and internationally connected group. In the wake of this expulsion, Spain’s economy and intellectual sphere suffered, contributing to a gradual decline in its influence on the global stage.

Prior to the Holocaust, Germany had one of the most vibrant Jewish communities in the world, particularly in areas like physics, literature, and music. Many groundbreaking thinkers — Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, and Walter Benjamin among them — were Jewish.

The Nazi regime’s genocidal policies led to the loss of this intellectual capital, as Jews fled, were killed, or silenced. Post-war Germany faced a profound intellectual void, and the wider scientific and cultural world suffered as well. Jewish scientists and thinkers dispersed around the world, bringing their talents to countries more welcoming, including the United States, which became the new center of scientific and intellectual innovation.

In the 20th century, the Soviet Union’s repression of its Jewish citizens and severe limitations on their professional opportunities led to a significant brain drain as Jews emigrated to the United States, Israel, and elsewhere. Many of these emigrants were scientists, doctors, and engineers who made immediate contributions to their new countries, particularly the United States and Israel.

The USSR, already struggling under an inefficient system, lost a significant portion of its intellectual and technical talent, further setting back its economy and society.

So, it should have been glaringly obvious that, when Democratic Party presidential candidate Kamala Harris did not select Josh Shapiro as her vice presidential candidate several weeks ago, this doomed her campaign, as evidenced by her resounding loss in this week’s election.

Shapiro is Jewish and the present-day (Democratic) governor of Pennsylvania — a state where he is decisively popular. As such, Shapiro was widely viewed as a top vice presidential candidate for the Harris campaign because he could help Harris carry Pennsylvania, a must-win state for both her and Trump’s campaigns.

However, younger voters and so-called “progressives” in the Democratic Party balked at Shapiro for his stance on the ongoing Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah-Iran war, as well as his historical support for the Jewish state. A number of voices on the far-Left have also attacked Shapiro during the last several weeks, accusing the governor of blindly supporting Israel’s response to October 7th in Gaza. Some have labeled him “Genocide Josh.”

Of course, there is no genocide taking place in Gaza by any stretch of the imagination, and the only parties in this conflict that have genocidal aims as a matter of policy and record are Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as their state sponsors: the jihadist countries of Qatar and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Still, the speculation that Shapiro was not tapped as Harris’ vice presidential nominee because he is Jewish appears — at least from my vantage point — to be an oversimplification of the Harris campaign’s decision-making process; meaning there were in all likelihood several reasons why Harris ultimately opted for another vice presidential nominee. But we cannot overlook the fact that Shapiro being Jewish and a justifiable supporter of Israel was in all probability part of the Harris campaign’s decision-making process.

And we should note that Shapiro is not just a politician who happens to be Jewish. He speaks openly about his faith and has brought his observant Jewish identity into his public life in ways that are rarely seen on the national stage. For example, Shapiro is the first governor to make the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion kosher.

Couple that with the fact that two very experienced American political pundits, neither of them Jewish and both Democrats, have in recent weeks claimed that the Democratic Party has a major anti-Jewish problem. One of them, CNN’s Van Jones, said that “antisemitism has become marbled into the Democratic Party.”¹

Even U.S. Congressman Jake Auchincloss (a Democrat from Massachusetts) voiced concerns, suggesting there was a “strong undercurrent of antisemitism” in the critique that Shapiro faced from some factions within the Democratic Party.²

Harris herself is most definitely not an antisemite; her husband is Jewish. According to Julia Wald, she also picked up some undesirable endorsements, including from two white supremacists (Nick Fuentes and Richard Spencer) and one totalitarian ruler (Vladimir Putin). The Iranian regime, Israel's self-declared archenemy, was also openly rooting for a Harris victory. “While I definitely know why the campaign did not publicize these erroneous endorsements,” wrote Wald, “they are on their own quite interesting, and together they show a pattern.”³

What’s more, Harris was thrust into representing a Democratic Party that has increasingly become the Progressive Party — and I am not talking about progressives who care deeply about social justice, economic inequality, publicly available healthcare and education, and so forth.

Instead, I am talking about the quasi-progressives who subscribe to Marxism (an extremist, failed form of governance) and the maligned “oppressor versus oppressed” framework which, in America, pits all “people of color” (the so-called “oppressed”) against “White” people (the so-called “oppressors”). Unfortunately for American Jewry, we are grouped into this “White oppressor” class — regardless if we are actually “White.” (Indeed, many are not.)

Harris might not be one of these quasi-progressives herself, but she has significantly championed their cause and given them a platform while in public office. Plus, the eventual pick to be her vice presidential candidate was mega-progressive Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who put “progressive economics” center-stage in the race for the White House.

As a result, the Harris-Walz campaign lost the state of Pennsylvania by some 78,000 votes (just a one-percent swing). Pennsylvania holds 19 electoral votes, the most of all the seven “swing states” (the states that most impact the outcome of the U.S. national election), making Pennsylvania the critical battleground for Harris and Trump. Democratic President Joe Biden took the state in 2020, while Trump won there in 2016.

Harris and Trump visited the state at least 20 times each in the months leading up to the election, and both candidates made stops in Pennsylvania on Monday as part of their final pushes on the eve of Election Day. Harris even held her final campaign event before Election Day in Philadelphia, the largest city in the state and the sixth-most populated city in all of the United States.

But none of this helped, because Harris put a nail in her coffin when she had the pristine opportunity to select Josh Shapiro — who, again, is the very popular governor of Pennsylvania — as her vice presidential candidate, but instead passed up on him at least in part due to his Jewishness and pro-Israel stance.

Indeed, a poll of Americans about the 20 “most favored institutions” in the U.S. showed that Israel is number six, whereas campus protestors, the Palestinian Authority, Antifa, and Hamas (obviously) occupy four of the five least-favorable institutions (China being the other one). Somehow, Harris ignored these sentiments, instead throwing in her lot with the quasi-progressives who champion Islamism and jihad.

Turns out, Harris was not the only one to experience a political debacle by neglecting the Jews. U.S. Congresswoman Cori Bush is a member of “The Squad,” the group of far-Left U.S. legislators with a long history of hating Israel and employing blatant antisemitic tropes. She has blamed U.S. funding to Israel for homelessness and crime in her jurisdiction of St. Louis, Missouri — invoking traditional antisemitic scapegoating and making good on a twisted tactic which “The Squad” routinely uses: to make every issue about, you know, “Palestine.”

AIPAC, the vaunted pro-Israel lobbying group, spent $8 million to successfully unseat Bush this past summer. And, a little over a month before then, AIPAC put some $15 million behind another anti-Israel candidate’s challenger, George Latimer, in New York’s 16th District, helping him crush the incumbent Jamaal Bowman — who has baselessly accused the Jewish state of “genocide” during the current Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah-Iran war.

But the reason AIPAC succeeded in these two cases and others is not some Jewish money conspiracy. In fact, AIPAC ran ads about Bush, Bowman, and others that had nothing to do with Israel or Jews. They simply exposed these quasi-progressive politicians as the frauds they are; for example, that Bush had voted against major infrastructure legislation which would have directly helped many people in her jurisdiction.

Yet this all happened several weeks before the presidential election on Tuesday. Why was Harris’ campaign — which had over a billion dollars in funds raised, some three or four times that of the Trump campaign — not paying attention to how the American people, on the whole, reject this quasi-progressive nonsense?

And, frankly, it is not just the Harris camp that screwed this up. It is the Democratic Party at large. While not all Democrats are progressives or quasi-progressives, far too many Democrats (and their donors and voter base) are unwilling to call out these antisemitic extremists and put them in check.

In Harris’ concession speech yesterday, she said: “Let us fill the night with a billion stars. The light of faith, service, and truth. May that work guide us even in the face of setbacks.”

Josh Shapiro is the ultimate personification of faith, service, and truth. Had she actually been guided by these principles — and not overly occupied with his Jewishness and pro-Israel stance — there probably would not be any setbacks to speak of.

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1. “Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz.” All-In Podcast.

2. “House Democrat on Shapiro criticism: ‘Strong undercurrent of antisemitism’.” The Hill.

3. Wald, Julia. “Why He Won and Why She Lost.” Window Before Death.