Burning things down

To try to persuade Jewish voters to cast ballots for Ronald Reagan for President in 1984, Republicans claimed that Jesse Jackson, who was perceived as anti-Israel and had just lost a bid for the Democratic nomination for president, held an IOU from Walter Mondale, the party nominee.

That IOU, which did not exist, but Republicans said did, allegedly claimed that if elected, Mondale would appoint Jackson Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense. And if he reneged on the deal, Jackson would tell all the Blacks to riot.

The amazingly idiotic scenario was calculated to exploit the sentiments of many Jewish voters:

Lots of Jewish voters believed the Secretary of State, and to a lesser degree Defense, were the next most important offices after the President. They believed those people advised the President, not that they took orders from him. And the State Department was thought to already be riddled with anti-Semites, so putting an anti-Israel person at the top would just make it worse.

Jackson had recently received a great deal of publicity using his influence with Arab leaders to gain the release of a Black, U.S. military pilot who had been shot down and captured by Syria. So, it would have been difficult to explain to voters that he did not care a whole lot about the Middle East or any international matters. People would not have thought that his focus was on employment, poverty, education, and housing.

Many Jewish voters had experienced the violence following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and believed that Black people would be very willing to riot and burn things down.

Jackson was acknowledged to be immensely popular in the Black community and it was believed that Black people would do whatever he told them to do.

When the lie was spread in the Orthodox Jewish community, it was written off by the Mondale campaign as right-wing propaganda delivered to a right-wing group. While most Jews were fairly liberal, Orthodox Jews (religious Jews) were socially conservative, hawkish on foreign affairs, and very strongly supportive of anything perceived to be "good for the Jews."

But when it took hold in liberal Jewish circles, Democrats had to go to great lengths to assure voters that the charge was just a great big lie.

Reagan won a majority of the Orthodox vote, but that constituted a small part of the Jewish electorate. The total Jewish community favored Mondale, as it had supported every Democratic Presidential candidate back to 1928 (and each one since).