The Democrats’ Religious Test

Far be it from us to tell Vice President Harris that she erred in her choice of Governor Walz as her running mate. Time, and voters, will tell if she met the moment or missed the mark. By some accounts, her choice came down to the Minnesotan or the governor of Pennsylvania, Joshua Shapiro. The latter enjoys great popularity in a swing state that could decide the election. He is also an observant Jew who has criticized antisemitism on streets and campus quads.Did Mr. Shapiro’s faith cost him the nod? The Speaker of the United States House, Mike Johnson, tells our A.R. Hoffman that he thinks it did. One commentator of the left, Van Jones, took to CNN to characterize the decision as “caving in to some of these darker parts in the party” and appeasing “anti-Jewish bigots” that have “gotten marbled into this party.” And this from someone who plans to vote for Ms. Harris in November.The Constitution reserves special scorn for those who would judge on the basis of religion. It ordains that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” It is the most emphatic prohibition in the Constitution — “no … ever … any.” It does not require ascribing prejudice to Ms. Harris — she is not antisemitic — to mark the ferocity of the opposition to Mr. Shapiro.The decision to pass over Mr. Shapiro is being celebrated by the likes of Representative Ilhan Omar and Senator Sanders. AOC is cheering. The leaders of the “uncommitted” movement, which seeks to push American policy Hamas-ward, are optimistic. This might be the election where Jews begin to defect from the Democratic Party. A new poll shows President Trump ahead among Jews in New York. Jews vote in Michigan and Pennsylvania, too. It is likely that American Jews as a whole will vote Democratic, as their ancestors have. Still, it is jarring to see an avowed critic of Israel like Representative Jamaal Bowman post an ebullient video wherein he exclaims, “it’s Walz baby, let’s go.” A quarter of a century ago, when Vice President Gore selected Senator Lieberman to be his running mate, his identity as a “very Jewish Jew” did not prompt consternation from the base, or the top of the ticket.Call it the Shapiro Question — could today’s Democratic Party elevate nationally a Jew who robustly supports the Jewish state? It is not that Mr. Shapiro has the politics of Vladimir Jabotinsky. There was that aforementioned broadside against Mr. Netanyahu, and Mr Shapiro has walked back a long ago op-ed he wrote critical of the Palestinian Arabs. He has clarified that a volunteer program that brought him to Israel did not involve serving in the IDF.Still, Mr. Shapiro caught our eye when he stood against the equivocations on antisemitism of the erstwhile president of the University of Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Magill. For this he earned the sobriquet of “Genocide Josh,” despite his stance on the Jewish state differing little from that of the other candidates for vice president. Only one of them, though, keeps kosher and sits down to Shabbat dinner on Friday nights.Senator Vance, at least, predicted that it would be Mr. Walz. He declared before the pick that “I think that they will have not picked Shapiro, frankly, out of antisemitism in their own caucus and in their own party … the far left doesn’t like the fact that he is a Jewish American.” Mr. Vance is hardly objective on this head, but his contention that darker forces were at work in the choice shows that Republicans plan to court Jewish voters. It appears that Mrs. Harris, in spurning Mr. Shapiro, abandoned the spirit of the “religious test” clause after a harrowing ten months that leave American Jews wondering whether the party has their backs. Choosing Mr. Shapiro could have alleviated those concerns, but that, too, would have been a religious test. It’s no small thing, though, that Mrs. Harris’s decision is being celebrated by the faction in her party that nearly all Americans worry about most.

The Democrats’ Religious Test

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