Kerry and the Jewish Vote: a response to the responses

Daniel Moore has responded to my post about why Kerry's Jewish ancestry might be a factor in his getting the "Jewish" vote:

"I suspect that close to 99% of all Jews in American have no idea that Kerry has a 'vaguely Jewish background.' (I certainly didn't) It's hard to imagine that Kerry's ancestral background even enters in to Jewish voter's decisions about voting for or against him."

In the comments to Daniel's post, someone has written: "I would hope that most politically aware Jews understand that voting for Kerry because he has a Jew in his tree is just as wrong as voting against Kerry because he has a Jew in his tree. You are right on in refuting this overly- simplistic view."

Let me make the following clear: I'm not suggesting people should vote based on race, religion, ancestry, or what have you, but I do think that voting based on perceived shared background is a phenomenon that does occur and thus cannot be discounted if one is to try to explain why people vote as they do. As for how many Jews know about Kerry's ancestry, I'm guessing more do than Daniel imagines, but I don't have the numbers on this, if such numbers exist.

Also, in response to the anonymous commentor who wrote that 1/4 black is black, while 1/4 Jewish is not, I'm not so sure it works that way. I mean, sure, Judaism is a religion, not a race...but why, then why did Kerry's grandfather change his name from Kohn to Kerry? In my opinion, he says he's Catholic, he's Catholic, regardless of his ancestry, but many people, for many different reasons, some more sinister than others, don't see things that way.

While voting based on a candidate's ancestry may be "simplistic," any analysis of voting patterns would have to take into account both the intelligent and the less-than-intelligent reasoning behind the way people vote.