Many Jewish citizens are worried about the selection of Joseph Lieberman as Mr. Gore's runningmate, particularly older Jewish-Americans brought up not to call attention to their Jewishness and to Judaism in general. Some fear that Lieberman would be a handy scapegoat for a Gore loss in November.

Here on Long Island, some Jewish political leaders still doubt broad local support for Jewish candidates. In recent years, however, this perception has been disproved many times over. There are only small pockets of Nassau County voters who favor, all other things being equal, non-Jewish candidates over Jewish candidates simply because of religion or ethnicity. Ironically, the most religious-conscious voters in Nassau are Jews themselves, and Jewish candidates typically run much stronger in heavily-Jewish neighborhoods than would be allowed by chance.

The Lieberman choice is worrisome on other levels to some Jews, often reluctant to speak up for fear of rebuke.

More than a thousand years in ghettos sensitized the last century of Jewish leaders to the plights of the poor and the undeservedly downtrodden. Jews were at the forefront of the anti-establishment movements to end Apartheid in the south, to establish trade unions in the face of corporate thuggery, to create a society where racial, ethnic and lifestyle differences are accepted by the majority with more and more ease.

Joseph Lieberman, meanwhile, is at the forefront of the movements to increase defense spending, including for boondoggles like Star Wars, to crack down on free speech because it offends his personal sense of decency, to solidify corporate hold on health care that has excluded scores of millions of Americans from our health care system. And Joseph Lieberman is being held up as the model, the example, for Jewish participation in national affairs.

There has long been an alliance in national politics between the activist Christian Right and the small Jewish Right, originally based on mutual support for aid to Israel. In 1988, for example, many conservative Jewish organizations backed Bush over Dukakis, even though Dukakis' wife was Jewish. Many in the organized, dispensationalist Christian Right see a strong Israel as a vital component in the fulfillment of End Day's prophecy.

Wall Street has momentarily retaken operational control of the Republican Party, and the Lieberman gambit may be seen as a way of exploiting any breach, courting ethically-sensitive, Clinton-hating voters.

Mostly, though, this was a move to stop the shocking bleeding away of Gore's support base due to Clinton fatigue, apathy and Ralph Nader. Many progressive and independent thinkers will feel the need to vote for a ticket with a minority candidate, but the bleeding may start again. Progress, populism and new ideas get people excited. They get Democrats excited. They want to rebuild schools, fight AIDS, raise our poor infant mortality rates.

When conservative, corporate Democrats hijacked the Democratic Party, they did what Nixon and Reagan could never do at the height of their popularity: They gave control of Congress and most governorships to the Republicans. Not because populism and progressivism died, but because many Democrats became deflated and apathetic.

Already we keep hearing Gore managers referring to the comeback win of Harry Truman in 1948. Well, Truman came back by transforming himself from a reactionary to a progressive in less than one year.

Democrats should learn from Harry, or the donkey may start bleeding again.