JOHN PODHORETZ ON THE WEINER-SEAT ELECTION: Oy, Such Tsuris for Obama and the Democrats.

It’s the most Jewish district in the country, and a great many of its Jews are religious Jews. In choosing Weprin to run for the seat, Democrats thought the fact that he sports a kippah would carry the day with his fellow Orthodox Jews.

It’s not happening that way, and even the notion that it would testifies to the ignorance of pols, including Jewish pols, who think religious Jews are like other ethnic voters.Weprin may be an Orthodox Jewish Democrat, but as such he is now actually in the minority among Orthodox Jews. And the commonality of their religious practice apparently does not provide sufficient cover for his being a representative of the Democratic party in the age of Obama.

The one thing we have been able to determine over the past 20 years is that the more “Jewish” you are—meaning the more you attend synagogue, the more you keep kosher, the more you send your kids to day school and Jewish camp, and the more you commit yourself to living a Jewish life with some fealty to the rules of the religion—the less politically liberal you are likely to be. Owing to Anthony Weiner’s foolhardiness, we are now getting a real-world test of this proposition in the one district in the country where it can actually be tested.

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