Elissa Slotkin: Internecine warfare among Democrats would be a ‘shanda’
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Ron Kampeas November 16, 2020
(JTA) — Elissa Slotkin, the rare Democrat who won reelection in a district where Donald Trump got a majority, is urging her fellow Democrats: don’t make a shanda before the GOP.
“There are people both inside and outside the party who are looking to split it apart,” Slotkin told Politico in a story posted Friday, the last in a series chronicling her bid to keep her Michigan district straddling Detroit’s suburbs and Lansing.
“And that’s the least strategic thing I can think of — it’s handing these anti-democratic forces that I’m so concerned about a gift,” she said. “While I disagree with a lot of people in my party, I still have a lot in common with them. And it would be what we call in Yiddish, a shanda, a shame, a deep shame, if internal politics led to a strategic opening for these completely anti-democratic forces. ”
Slotkin and several others who flipped Republican seats in 2018 kept their districts, but many others are out; Republicans have gained at least 15 seats this election, although Democrats have maintained the majority.
Slotkin, a moderate who was elected after a long career in the national security sector later told the Jewish Democratic Council of America that she was proud to use the Yiddishism.
“There was a Politico article out today,” she said in the Zoom call. “We did like a series for Politico, and in my district, we have less than 4000 Jews, we have a very small Jewish community, but I got the word Shanda into that article, and then they had to explain it, including the journalist who never heard it, and so I feel I’m doing my part to further the culture of the Jewish people.”
Tim Alberta, the journalist in question, confirmed his prior ignorance on Twitter. “My Yiddish is rusty,” he said.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
