He sowed the seeds of his destruction himself many months ago, when he decided to exploit sexism and misogyny in his quest to defeat Hillary. Now John McCain will reap the harvest.
I have long believed the most dangerous thing about this primary was the misogyny, especially aimed at older women, running rampant unchecked by Obama or the Democratic Party. You can’t simply put that back up in its cage now that the nomination is over. That kind of hatred spewed into the culture is bound to affect the culture and change it in ways that are not positive.
Obama may very well want to stop this now, but I’m not sure this monster is still within his control. But then that’s what always happens when you accept help from a monster, it eventually turns on you. What? Obama and the Democrats thought Frankenstein was really about a scientist who built a monster from dead people?
With the addition of Sarah Palin to the Republican ticket, Obama almost certainly wishes he could re-bottle the misogyny he uncorked. But it’s too late. Woman-hating is now such a routine aspect of the Obama movement that the true believers can’t help themselves anymore. It simply pours out of them:
“She looks like a porn star.”
“Sarah Palin’s judgment is despicalble. She knowingly whelped a Mongoloid child earlier this year, probably to pander to the Right to Life Nutbags. Irresponsible decisions like hers dilutes the viability of the American Gene Pool. No wonder why we are falling farther and farther behind in an increasingly competitive global economic environment.
Her OB should have cut her tubes after her first child!!!”
“What is this, the Vagina Epilogue?”
“Will McCain have Palin do a Lewinsky on him every day to get his juices flowing?”
“I’d like to retract some of the thoughts of her qualifications that are stirring in my head. Sarah Palin is, likely, qualified to wash my dishes, even moreso to fetch a Big Wheel from my driveway. I was thinking she wasn’t, but those are just exaggerated thoughts.
What a bimbo!”
Obama supporters, all.
Yesterday I wrote that the possums will lose this election for Obama by alienating every woman in America who hasn’t already run screaming from the sexism in the Democratic party. Well, not every woman, but enough. Enough women will either stay home or vote for Sarah Palin (not McCain) to make that nut.
They’ll do so not out of spite and not because they’re irrational. They’ll do so because they will have decided that the critical thing, right here, right now, is not to be bound by some historical allegiance to the party that used to be the home of women’s rights, but to strike a hard blow against the sexism and misogny of today.
Can’t say I blame them.
Posted by Violet under Election 2008, PUMA on August 30, 2008, 11:55 pm EST
I’ve been so busy being a PUMA that I’ve had little time to read about PUMAs. Or I should say, read about myself, since in America it’s the media that tells us who and what we are. It’s like Patsy said on the radio the other night: here she is, a Black woman and proud of it, come to find out that because she doesn’t support Obama, she’s a racist. “Guess I better get measured for my hood,” she said.
So the media narrative about PUMAs is of interest, since in good Goebbels fashion it’s bound to be far more important than the actual truth. And the media narrative about PUMAs appears to be unchanged from the media narrative about Hillary supporters during the primaries: we’re all old white racist conservative crypto-Republicans who think Obama is too liberal.
Too liberal? Obama?
As I’ve written many times, my problem with Obama is that he’s not liberal enough. If anybody’s a crypto-Republican, it’s him. The Obama movement combines all the worst elements of Republicanism into one juggernaut package: Rovian cheating, Reaganesque marketing, Bushian pseudo-religious fervor, wingnut propaganda, mindless worship of authority, hatred of women, contempt for the disadvantaged, and of course GOP political positions on everything from FISA to the environment.
The PUMAs I know feel the same. We’re feminists. We’re liberals. We’re a hell of a lot more liberal — truly liberal — than the callow young white men who form Obama’s cheering squad. Those guys are indistinguishable from the Jonah Goldbergs of the world, though they’re too self-infatuated to realize it.
But the PUMA movement — the coalition of Democrats who reject Obama — is broader than just my crowd. It’s true that there are some PUMAs who complain that Obama is “far left,” or who worry aloud that he’s a front for “far left” extremists of some kind. But what do they mean by that?
They don’t mean that he’s too progressive. Obviously he’s not. Every PUMA knows that Obama ran a dirty campaign, that he intends to continue and even expand Bush’s policies for faith-based programs and government spying, that he’s soft on women’s rights, that he endorses the Cheney energy plan. And every PUMA is unhappy about that. Every PUMA wants a Democratic nominee who actually represents Democratic values.
What disturbs those who talk about the “far left” is something completely different: it’s Obama’s connections to people like William Ayers and, tangentially, to Louis Farrakhan — people who are typically labeled “the radical left” or “the far left.”
The problem here is one of nomenclature. The current class of tags we’re working with is insufficient to adequately describe reality.
Consider: the Nation of Islam, an extremely patriarchal organization that preaches female inferiority, is allegedly on the “left.” But so are feminists. So are gay rights activists. So are political atheists. Cramming everyone who resists the White Christian Male hegemony into one category makes no sense. And treating “liberal” or “progressive” as if they’re the weak end of a continuum that culminates in “far left” results in sheer absurdity. By that reckoning, I suppose, if you’re a moderate leftist you might belong to NOW, but if you’re really leftist you’re a prime candidate for the Nation of Islam. If you’re a good liberal you might belong to the Sierra Club, but if you’re really hard-core you probably give money to Hezbollah. Huh?
What we need to do is get behind the labels and understand what people are really saying. Those PUMAs who think Obama is “too far left” aren’t talking about domestic policies. They’re not talking about abortion or gay rights or any of the other issues that typically distinguish Democrats and Republicans. What they’re talking about, I think, is Obama’s connections (whatever those may be) to wild-eyed pistol wavers.
For the record, I don’t share those concerns. I don’t think Obama is a fellow traveler with any terrorist organizations, nor is he a front for extremists (unless you categorize neo-Republican financiers and propagandists as extremists). And the PUMAs who do worry about that stuff are only one subset of the coalition.
What all PUMAs agree on is that the Obama movement represents the abandonment of basic Democratic values. All PUMAs are “progressives” or “liberals” in the sense that they demand a Democratic Party that continues to stand up to the Republican assault on women’s rights, social programs, and the Constitution. They want a Democratic nominee who’s actually a Democrat.
And that’s not Obama.
Maybe this would be a good time to re-post some of what I’ve written over the past months:
Did you think I’d died? Did you think I’d been kidnapped by the Obama campaign and forced to swear fealty to the god-king?
Actually I’ve just had an insanely busy and complicated week. I’m still busy, as a matter of fact. But I’m here and alive — well, no, actually I’m not alive. Extant is perhaps a better word. I’m still a ghost in the Smoking Lounge with my peeps Raoul, Alex the Grey Parrot, Nietzsche, and God. But I’ve been so fried these past few days that I didn’t even have time for the Friday night throwdown with Nerf ball and tequila shots, which is usually the highlight of my week. (By the way, God always wins at Nerf ball. Always. Her aim is incredible.)
But I have a treat for you: a trailer for the documentary in the works that will “tell the WHOLE story of what happened to the Democratic Party this year.” Man, this movie is going to be good. Watch:
I know, it’s crazy. But it happens sometimes. My theory is that Matthews just talks so damn much that purely on a statistical basis he’s bound to burble out something true once in awhile.
This is a transcript of his remarks on Morning Joe a couple of days ago, forwarded to me on a PUMA mailing list:
“I think the world thinks he is already President. They’ve got to be disabused of that. We have a Presidential campaign ahead of us, it’s not behind us. And they are wrong if they think this guy has been elected. I mean, this guy is not elected by any stretch, this election is up in the air; I mean that, up in the air. And I think that is something that is a false perception. He shouldn’t be probably giving world leadership speeches until he is a world leader…
“I don’t think by any means, does Barack Obama have this deal closed with the Clinton crowd. Their contributors, women, women’s group, they are not together. The Clinton people are not aboard. The Democratic party is not united and anybody that thinks that it is, is confused or deluded. This Democratic Party has got problems on it’s hands. And it’s Barack Obama’s challenge to bring Bill Clinton aboard. When I see their two faces together in the same room, I’ll believe it. I haven’t seen that yet. There is big time problems in the Democratic party. And there is the potential that John McCain will be the tortoise in the battle with the hare…
“Barack Obama has got to identify with the gas pump, with the kitchen table, with the husband and wife talking late at night about how they are going to pay the bills they haven’t been able to pay, when they are out of money. He doesn’t get to those people…that’s why Hillary could play a role. Hillary is a bread and butter candidate…this rock star is so elevated, so wholesale that he’s almost created a need for Hillary Clinton as his running mate…who can talk about gasoline prices, talk about women’s job opportunities, equal pay, basic stuff like minimum wage, getting food on the table, getting gas in the tank. He doesn’t talk like that. And you gotta talk like that if you are a Democrat.”
The natural order was restored immediately following these remarks, however, when Matthews started bloviating inanely about “racial/ethnic issues” and “the Bradley effect.” These media clowns still think the Bradley effect explains New Hampshire; they still can’t grasp the truth. The truth was that Hillary and her supporters were so vilified that many Clinton voters kept mum about their preferences in order to avoid being harassed. I personally know many women who kept their support for Hillary a secret throughout the primaries, even from other members of their family.
That same dynamic continues, with countless Hillary supporters utterly determined not to vote for Obama and reward misogyny. But why talk about it out loud when some nasty Obamabot will just insult you and call you a bitch/ho/c–t/racist/Republican?
This is the video from Morning Joe, but of course if you’re like me you won’t be able to watch it without self-medicating heavily beforehand.
Posted by Violet under Election 2008, PUMA on July 27, 2008, 10:41 pm EST
The central issue of this election is not Barack Obama versus John McCain. The central issue is the future of the Democratic party. For PUMAs, the election is about choosing between the Obama version of the Democratic party — misogynistic, sexist, corrupt, pseudo-Republican — and a Democratic party that represents women’s rights and progressive values.
Of course, there’s nothing sacred about the Democratic party itself; PUMAs are not motivated by nostalgia or sentiment. What matters is that there continue to be at least one major political party in this country that stands for what we term “Democratic” or “progressive” values. We must not have the equivalent of two GOPs.
That’s why the Obama movement is a cancer that must be excised. The best way to do that would be to reject Obama now and make Hillary Clinton the nominee — a strategy that would also have the benefit of ensuring our party’s victory in the fall — but that’s not going to happen. The only remaining option is for Obama to be defeated at the polls in November, just as McGovern was in ‘72.
Do you know that history? Do you know that back in ‘72 the McGovernites were the ones who were going to take over the party? They were the bright young things swarming everywhere, the functional (though not ideological) equivalents of today’s possums, chomping at the bit to replace the old party machinery.
The old party machinery had other plans. The big-time Dems sat on their hands that year. The usual election rigmarole was not rolled out. Checkbooks remained closed. So you don’t need us anymore? Fine then. Get yourself elected without us.
You know how that went. McGovern was defeated in the mother of all landslides (though there were many reasons for that, only one of which was the lack of support from the party machine), and that was the end of him.
Those anti-McGovern Democrats in ‘72 were practicing long-range strategy. The Republicans did a similar thing in ‘64, when they sacrificed Barry Goldwater.
Most of Obama’s young possums don’t understand this kind of thinking, in large part because they are so young. For many of them this election is only the first or second time they’ve been eligible to vote, and at that age every election feels apocalyptic. They believe that unless they vote for the candidate who is better (however marginally) than the other candidate in a head-to-head match-up, civilization as we know it will end. The notion of temporarily casting a contrary vote to swing the long-term path of your party in a strategic move that will pay off down the road…oh man, that’s just…what?
That’s why the possums typically can’t get past the “but do you really think McCain is better?” level of argument. Young feminists, for example: they say things like, “but don’t you know that Republicans are anti-choice?” Yes, dears; that’s the point. Republicans are anti-choice, which is exactly why it’s so important that Democrats continue be pro-choice — and pro-women’s rights, pro-Fourth Amendment, pro-separation of church and state, pro-health care, pro everything that the Republicans are against. That’s why we’re trying to keep Barack Obama from taking over the party. I’m willing to lose one election if it means ejecting him and getting our party back to its values.
It’s important to spell this out clearly, because DNC officials are studiously pretending that they don’t understand what the PUMA movement is all about. Surely this is nonsense; by now they’ve heard enough that they must understand perfectly well what’s going on. They’re just playing to the gallery, pitching their rhetoric to an audience of possums and media twits.
That’s what the letter from Don Fowler and Alice Germond was about; it was leaked because it was designed to leaked. Donna Brazile’s recent column is in a similar vein, with Donna suggesting that PUMAs are simply bitter and/or confused about our electoral process (”There are only two choices now: Barack Obama or John McCain,” Donna writes helpfully.)
Or is it possible that the DNC really doesn’t understand what’s happening? I tend to assume that career politicians understand career-politician-type stuff, but that may be a rash assumption these days.
Posted by Violet under Election 2008, PUMA on July 22, 2008, 8:29 am EST
(By the way, when I wrote that I hadn’t heard about Obama using “99 Problems (But A Bitch Ain’t One)” as his Iowa victory song. If I’d known that, in my little reverse-reality story I would have had Hillary striding into her New Hampshire victory party to the strains of “Knock A N—-r Down.”)
Now for the rest of the story:
Our reverse-reality scenario continues with Obama winning the popular vote in the primaries, only to have party officials manipulate the delegate count to ensure that Hillary clinches the nomination — even to the point of assigning some of Obama’s delegates to Hillary for primaries in which she didn’t compete. In behind-the-scenes maneuvers, as Obama is wrapping up his final primary victory in Puerto Rico, the DNC forces him to suspend his campaign and endorse Hillary.
Hillary, for her part, plunges into the role of presumptive nominee with confidence. She abandons any pretense of being a progressive (or even much of a Democrat), espousing right-wing Republican policies on everything from domestic surveilliance to the (non)-separation of church and state. She also drops her support — never more than lukewarm — for full voting rights for African-Amercians, arguing instead that they should have to pass stringent psychological tests and consult with their families and pastors before making important decisions like who to vote for. When members of the Congressional Black Caucus urge her to reach out to African-American supporters of Obama, she sneers that they need to “get over it” themselves, and that if they’d just think for a moment they’d realize it’s for their own good.
Hillary’s occasional attempts to downplay racism go awry. She makes an awkward speech praising Obama for proving that black men can perform every bit as well as white girls. At one of her fundraisers a comedian regales the crowd with “n—-r” jokes; Hillary starts to chide him gently, but then smiles and says, “I’m just messin’ with you!”
I must confess a bit of fatigue and irritation with people who continue to carp, complain, and criticize the results of the primary and lay down conditions for their support. The Los Angeles Lakers didn’t establish conditions to recognize the Boston Celtics as NBA Champions; Roger Federer did not demand concessions before recognizing that Rafael Nadal defeated him at Wimbledon.
It is time to act in a mature and resourceful fashion. It’s time to put the primaries behind us. It’s time to support Hillary Clinton without conditions or demands.
The underlying message there, of course, is that African-Americans must choose between being a Democrat and standing up for their own rights and dignities. Previously the two things had been compatible; now, it seems, they are mutually exclusive. It’s one or the other.
How strange that the DNC thinks African-Americans will choose the party over themselves.
P.S. FrenchDoc discovered the following comment in the thread at TPM, and I feel compelled to direct your attention to it:
At the end of WWII, all the French whores who serviced the Germans were rounded up. Their heads were shaved, and they were tarred and feathered. At the end of a war, the victorious side settles its debts. If you helped, you get a reward. If you did not help, you are in serious trouble.
That’s really quite mild in terms of the usual Obamabot misogyny, but what’s interesting is the blatant desire for violent revenge. It wasn’t enough to destroy Hillary; they’re still itching to punish her supporters. This is bone-deep hatred of women.
Posted by Violet under Election 2008, PUMA on July 21, 2008, 1:35 am EST
In an interview this week with “Relevant,” a Christian magazine, Obama said prohibitions on late-term abortions must contain “a strict, well defined exception for the health of the mother.”
Obama then added: “Now, I don’t think that ‘mental distress’ qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term.”
We’re all feminists here, so I don’t need to explain why and how that is outrageous.
In a recent interview, Obama appears to back away from his long-stated positions on abortion (and a proposed federal abortion rights law he had co-sponsored), repudiate 35 years of accepted Supreme Court rulings on the issue and embrace a view on abortion restrictions that has been expressed on the Court only by Justices Thomas and Scalia.
Obama’s remarks are printed verbatim in the interview, published yesterday in Relevant Magazine. Read them — there’s no mistaking that Obama says he no longer will support what’s long been a cornerstone of the abortion rights debate: The Court’s insistence that laws banning abortions after the fetus is viable (now about 22 weeks) contain an exception to allow doctors to perform them if necessary to protect a pregnant woman’s mental health.
‘I have repeatedly said that I think it’s entirely appropriate for states to restrict or even prohibit late-term abortions as long as there is a strict, well-defined exception for the health of the mother. Now, I don’t think that ‘mental distress’ qualifies as the health of the mother,” Obama said. “I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term. Otherwise, as long as there is such a medical exception in place, I think we can prohibit late-term abortions.”
Wow.
Greenburg goes on to review the history of the mental health exception, and why removing it has long been the goal of anti-choicers. Read the whole thing.
Then, when you’re finished saying “Wow,” how about saying “ROAR”?
In the grand tradition of American political declarations, a group of PUMAs have prepared a declaration — part Declaration of Independence, part Declaration of Sentiments, part Martin Luther’s 95 Theses (okay, that’s not American, but whatever). The lead author is Anna Belle of Peacocks and Lilies, who offers it to the PUMA community to use and reproduce at will. She issues the following “Call To Action”:
Call to Action
Like The Declaration of Independence and The Declaration of Sentiments, this document was originally authored by one author, and modified by others in agreement. The final document then is one of the community, and not the original author. When this document is posted tonight, it will be available for use without attribution. Claim it as your own, because it belongs to you, and you had a hand in shaping it.
And like the Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of Sentiments, change doesn’t just happen in the presence of text. It’s what people do with that text, the life they give it, how it changes them, and the facts on the ground that creates lasting change. So take this document, copy and paste it to as many places online as you can find. Print it out and mail it to your local congressional critters. Mail or e-mail copies to the DNC and the Obama campaign. Somebody, for goodness sakes, please e-mail a copy to Hillary Clinton.
And late Sunday night, after the sun has gone down, take a page from Martin Luther’s play book and print it out, take it down to your local Democratic Party Headquarters or your local Obama Campaign Headquarters and TAPE IT TO THEIR DOOR. Make sure it is there for them as a wake up call when they arrive for work on Monday morning. Make your voices heard by getting out and getting involved. It’s your movement. How are you going to move it?
When, in the course of U. S. Presidential Elections, it becomes necessary for one portion of a political party to assume among the people of the nation a position different from that which they have previously occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of their Constitution entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of fellow citizens requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course.
In agreement with generations who have gone before us, we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed at birth with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.
Prudence will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for transient causes; and accordingly experience has shown that citizens are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the political structures to which they are accustomed. But political parties are not governments, and when a long train of abuses and usurpations evinces a design to reduce them under authoritarianism, it is their duty to throw off such a political party, and to provide different representation for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of many in the Democratic Party, and it is this suffering which compels them to now demand the representation to which they are entitled. The recent history of both parties is a history of repeated injuries on the part of elected officials against the electors, having in direct object the establishment of authoritarian power over them, for the purpose of profit. This has rendered the Democratic Party unrecognizable to ordinary citizens. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
Objections
The members of the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and By-Laws Committee violated The DNC charter on May 31, 2008 by meeting in private, in direct violation of the Sunshine Rules Provision of said Charter.
On that same day, the Democratic Party grossly violated ethical standards when it awarded four delegates to candidate Barack Obama based on actual votes for candidate Hillary Clinton, and in addition, awarded him delegates based on votes for “Uncommitted.”
Earlier in the campaign season, the Democratic Party violated its own Delegate Selection Rules by applying penalties to only two states who broke Section 11 calendar rules, even though five states broke those rules. In addition, Florida and Michigan were originally stripped of 100% of their delegates, even though the rules stipulated a 50% penalty.
The decisions of the RBC meeting mentioned above are evidence of sexism and authoritarianism within the ranks of the Democratic Party.
Caucuses are a violation of the one-person, one-vote and secret ballot principles that have been cornerstone Democratic values for more than a century. They produced a skewed and unfair result this primary season. Caucus states are also over-represented in the pledged delegate count, in violation of the one-person, one-vote principle.
Sexism was allowed to flourish as never before not only because of the behavior of the mainstream media, but also by the actions of many in the progressive online community, the stark silence of the Democratic Leadership and because ordinary Americans, male and female, engaged in it as long as it advanced their favored candidate.
The voices of 18 million voters who supported Hillary Clinton have been illegitimately silenced, ridiculed, and subjected to outright fabrications on the part of the mainstream press and the Internet press.
Now, in view of the dismissal of one-half the Democratic voters of this primary season, their social degradation, in view of the unjust actions above mentioned, and in view of the disenfranchisement of the voters in two states, and because we do feel ourselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of a free and fair primary election, we insist that the Democratic Party address our objections, or risk the loss of our votes come November.
In entering upon the work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we will use every instrument within our power to affect our objectives. We will employ agents, circulate tracts and flyers, blog, advertise in all media, petition state and national Democratic leadership, and endeavor to enlist the press in our behalf.
Resolutions
Resolved, that the Democratic Party must seat the full Michigan and Florida delegation in adherence to the thoroughly Democratic principle of one-person, one-vote.
Resolved, that Michigan delegates must be awarded according to the actual votes cast, specifically that Hillary Clinton must be given 73 delegates and Barack Obama must be given 0 (zero).
Resolved, that Hillary Clinton’s name must be offered on the first roll call at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August of 2008, in accordance with tradition for 16 of the last 18 Democratic National Conventions.
Resolved, that caucuses should be abolished, and the Democratic Primary system in its entirety must be reformed to better reflect the one-person, one-vote principle, as well as the equal representation principle enshrined in the Constitution.
Resolved, that millions of women and men alike no longer think of the Democratic Party as the party for women’s issues, or for equality and fairness, or for the protection of abortion rights, and will no longer vote for them based on such criteria.
Resolved, that the cynical exploitation of cultural issues will not be rewarded with votes, and that it is part of the PUMA mission to educate the electorate about such abuses.
Resolved, that the PUMA movement is comprised of traditional and loyal Democrats who have carefully watched and recorded the events of the 2008 Primary campaign season.
Resolved, that 18 million Americans voted for Hillary Clinton, more than any other presidential primary candidate in history, and they have a right to help shape the agenda and processes of the Democratic Party.
Submitted July 4, 2008
Posted by Violet under Election 2008, PUMA on July 4, 2008, 4:47 pm EST
A grassroots movement is something that comes from the ground up; hence the name. That should go without saying, but since the phrase has become utterly devalued by the Opossum marketing-campaign-disguised-as-grassroots, I thought I’d better explain it. Especially since we now have a real grassroots movement afoot, a veritable prairie fire called PUMA. And the possums can’t understand it at all. That’s because they’ve never seen anything like it.
The “Obama movement” is not a true grassroots movement. Being popular is not the same as being grassroots. Having a lot of donors is not the same as being grassroots. That’s just market share. The Obama thing is and has always been a top-down, massively-funded, professionally-designed advertising campaign masquerading as a spontaneous grassroots phenomenon. It’s a product. A very slick, carefully packaged product. And, in a deft postmodern move, part of the product is the illusion that people who buy it are creating an actual grassroots movement. You know: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” In truth they’re just unpaid salespeople. They’re Amway distributors, buttonholing everybody to tell them about “the plan,” never realizing that the whole point of the thing is just to make the handful of folks at the top of the pyramid stinking rich.
PUMA, on the other hand, is a genuine grassroots movement: spontaneous, disorganized, and very messy. The name itself was coined by SM in a comment at the Confluence on June 1, but the seeds had already been sown and were germinating weeks before. In my own blogular timeline, I mark this post as a turning point: Why I will not vote for Obama even if he’s the nominee — and why you shouldn’t either. Hillary supporters had been getting angrier and angrier at Obama and at the DNC’s obvious intention to force him on us, and with that post on May 7th I crossed my personal Rubicon. The response was as close to viral as this reclusive little blog ever gets. Other Hillary supporters on other blogs were writing the same kinds of posts, and it soon became clear that we were riding the crest of a wave that was breaking all over the country.
A week later the mainstream media picked up on the phenomenon. Cynthia Ruccia and Kimberly Myers went on O’Reilly, and their appearance sparked an enormous reaction from women all over America. ABC covered the story. A radio jock in Philadelphia started Operation Turndown. If you read through the comment threads from that week on the various Hillary blogs, you can see what would become the PUMA movement taking shape. It was all still speculative at that point, since Hillary was still in the race, but we were gearing up mentally for what lay ahead. The issues we discussed then are the issues we’re still discussing now: how to frame our resistance, what to do between now and the convention, what to do in November.
All of this potential energy was poised and in place by the time the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee held its Unity Square Dance and Jamboree on Saturday, May 31, and proceeded to engage in election fraud right on national TV. That was the moment when SM, in a burst of inspiration, said, “Party Unity My Ass!” A few days later Hillary suspended her campaign, and the potential energy was released. Overnight, it seemed, Hillary’s supporters and fundraisers crystallized into a thousand different ad hoc Yahoo groups and mailing lists and blogs and petition sites, all trying to figure out how to make their voices heard and connect with like-minded souls. SM wrote up a history of those days in Happy PUMA 1-month Birthday! (”Those days” — jeez, it was less than a month ago. I sound like a Latin American revolutionary reminiscing about being in the jungles with Che.)
Riverdaughter did a great job of keeping the “PUMA” coinage up front and center, and it wasn’t long before that became the unofficial name of the whole movement. It’s catchy, it’s funny, and everybody likes seeing the big cat snarl. I know I never get tired of it:
The possums, of course, don’t understand what’s happening at all.
First of all, they really, really don’t grasp the concept of grassroots. They think “grassroots” means downloading a fundraiser widget from MyBarackObama.com to put on their MySpace. The notion of a spontaneous political movement, unled by any leader, arising in outraged reaction to injustice, is beyond them. Somebody, they mutter darkly to each other, must be behind this stupid cat thing. Is it Evil Hillary Herself? Is it the GOP? At the Great Orange Cheeto, possums write indignant posts asking why “somebody” doesn’t stop the PUMAs. They sign petitions to nowhere demanding that “somebody” do something about it. (It reminds me of children writing to Santa Claus, but I suppose that’s cruel.)
Secondly, the possums — as ever — simply cannot comprehend that millions of committed, progressive Democrats look at Barky Opossum and instead of seeing whatever the possums see (the Easter Bunny? Harvey?), they see corruption and sexism and media mendacity and creeping Republicanism. But since the possums cannot, or maybe will not, understand that fact, they’re forced to invent other reasons that Democrats might not want to vote for their hero. “You’re a racist!” is popular, with “you’re a Republican!” rapidly gaining ground. I’ve yet to be called a racist Republican, but perhaps that’s considered redundant.
I do wish the possums would take off the blinders for a moment and try to see what’s happening, because it’s a precious thing. Real grassroots democracy is rare in this country, almost extinct. And after the 18-month-long Pepsi commercial that is the Obama campaign, it’s incredibly refreshing.
I’ve felt for the past few months that our nation must be going through one of those mass-insanity, mob-rule periods like the Salem witch trials or the Prohibition era or the McCarthy pinko scare. I imagine that history will not look kindly on this time. Future schoolchildren will wonder what possessed us all and what side would they have been on in the witchhunt of 2008.
I could have written that myself. In fact, a few years from now if I come across that paragraph in some data dumpster dive, I’ll probably think I did write it. It’s exactly how I feel.
I’m feeling it especially today, with the news that Obama is planning to keep Bush’s faith-based programs. God almighty. How much clearer can it get? Coming on top of the FISA immunity thing, the campaign finance reversal, and the trial balloon about keeping Gates on as Secretary of Defense, it’s a miracle of nature that the possums can’t see what this guy is about. If he started showing up at press conferences wearing a flight suit, do you think they’d get it then? (Answering self: no; see insanity, mass.)
None of this is a surprise to us PUMAs, who have been sounding the alarm since before we were PUMAs. I stand by what I said here, which is pretty much what I’ve been saying for months: Obama represents the metastasization of the Republican cancer to the Democratic Party. That’s why we’re fighting him. How many Republican parties do we need in this country, anyway?
Posted by Violet under Election 2008, PUMA on July 1, 2008, 5:41 pm EST
The PUMA movement is a grassroots uprising of people determined to resist the Obama takeover of the Democratic party and all that it represents. We refuse to legitimize from the left the sexism and misogyny that Obama exploited. We refuse to endorse the strong-arm, anti-democratic actions of the DNC itself, which manipulated the nominee selection process to force a predetermined result. We refuse to comply with the metastasization of the Republican cancer to the Democratic Party, which is what in our view Obama represents — in his imperialism, in his pseudo-religiosity, in his money-soaked corruption, and in his political positions. We refuse to give up our voices — our leverage — for the sake of a fraudulent “party unity” that is no more than the short-circuiting of democracy. We refuse to let the Democratic Party become “Republican lite,” abandoning its mission to represent women, workers, immigrants, gays, the poor, the disadvantaged, the elderly.
Most of us are lifelong Democrats, seasoned veterans of the political game. We know exactly what we’re doing. We’re making a high-stakes strategic bid to salvage the Democratic Party — or, failing that, to build a new coalition that will take up the mantle that the DNC seems determined to shed.
So why are we dismissed as hysterical angry women, so bitter at the defeat of Hillary that we’re ready to lash out in blind, confused rage and vote against our interests? Because of sexism. That’s how sexism works: it is the systematic devaluing of women and their actions. No matter that not all PUMAs are women; the movement is female-identified. And so we’re dismissed as hysterical old bats who can’t think straight.
I sympathize with the men in the PUMA movement who are experiencing this for the first time. It’s frustrating, isn’t it? Read this fine post by myiq2xu, a mixed-chromosome PUMA. There’s a subtext in that essay, an unspoken air of frustration along the lines of, “why aren’t people taking me seriously?” Welcome to the world of women, myiq2xu. You could have the political intelligence of Bismarck and you’d still be dismissed as a hormone-addled cow on the rag.
Just as reactions to Hillary Clinton’s campaign served as a kind of giant diorama of sexism in this country, so the reaction to the PUMA movement shows how anything female-identified is automatically assumed to be irrational. Media coverage of PUMA has exploded in the last week, but I’ve yet to see an article that actually explains what we’re about. Again and again we’re described as angry, bitter women, unable to get over our burning disappointment that Hillary lost. We’re made to sound like fan girls having a crying fit because our favorite got voted down on American Idol.
The overtures (such as they are) from the DNC and the Obama campaign are in a similar vein: the same assumption that we’re just crying over Hillary, the same assurance that once we get a grip on ourselves we’ll come around, the same failure to acknowledge our actual agenda. Obama tells us that if we stopped and thought for moment, we’d get over it. (Newsflash, Opossum: we’ve spent a lot more than a moment thinking about you, and that’s why we’re working so damn hard to bring you down.) Gov. Rendell tells us that, basically, we’re dumb pussies. “Feminists” (note the scare quotes) in the Obama camp weigh in with articles telling us that our hysterical whining just proves the male chauvinists right. (Enlisting women to deliver the sexist message is an old trick, and has precisely zero effect on us cowgirls who have been around the rodeo a few times. But nice try.)
What none of these folks realize is that they’re simply confirming our judgment of what the Obama movement is about and why it must be resisted. Sexism? Check! Intellectual dishonesty? Check! Smug insistence that Obama Is The One and anybody who disagrees is insane/racist/hysterical? Check!
Keep it up, possums. Keep it up. You’re making our case for us.
Posted by Violet under Election 2008, PUMA on June 29, 2008, 8:12 pm EST
From the folks at I Own My Vote. I know there are a bunch of petitions floating around, a lot of different PUMA groups to join, a plethora of “why we fight” statements. But this particular manifesto looks like it has legs. It could end up being the unofficial head count of our movement, the bargaining chip laid before the DNC. If you’re any kind of PUMA, you need to sign this one.
Preamble
When you read the I Own My Vote Pledge, keep in mind that the demands it contains are not admissions of defeat, nor are they conditions precedent to your vote. Hillary’s campaign is only suspended, not ended. And only you can decide when your vote has been earned. Whether you are a PUMA activist, a WomenCountPAC donor, a Just Say No Deal blogger, a Clinton Democrat for McCain, a yellow dog Democrat for VoteBoth, or simply a Hillary Clinton supporter who feels like the Party leaders and their presumptive nominee are ignoring everything that you value, the most powerful statement you can make right now is that YOU OWN YOUR VOTE. Only in finding that common ground will we be counted, for only in that common ground will we be able to count ourselves.
* * * * *
On Saturday, June 7, 2008, Hillary Clinton suspended her historic campaign for President. To her 18 million voters, it may have seemed like an end, but I pledge to make it a beginning … a beginning of a movement to achieve the democratic and just country that Hillary has envisioned for America.
I stand together with Hillary Clinton’s 18 million voters to demand that Senator Obama and the Democratic Party:
Bring us together by seating 100% of the Florida and Michigan delegations in Denver with 100% of their votes, allocated in accordance with the popular vote of each state.
Bring us together by adopting policies on the Platform Committee that Hillary Clinton has championed.
Bring us together through reform of the primary and caucus system to reflect the basic principle of one person/one vote.
Bring us together through outspoken denunciation of all gender bias, racism and other forms of discrimination.
Bring us together by fairly and respectfully including Hillary and her supporters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver by, among other things, placing her name in nomination for President, conducting a roll call vote, and providing her a prominent speaking role during prime time on August 26th, the 88th anniversary of women’s suffrage.
I own my vote. It does not belong to any party. It does not belong to any candidate. It does not belong to any mob that would impose its will on me. Only I can decide how to use my vote, and I can decide based on any criteria I choose. Therefore I pledge not to give my vote to anyone who does not earn it.
As an empty threat, it ranks right up there with “Eat your spinach now or your mother and I won’t pay for college” or even George W. Bush’s taunting promise to get Osama bin Laden “dead or alive.”
Predictably, Shapiro displays zero understanding of what’s actually at stake, and of why women are uniting to exert their leverage over the Democrats. In his estimation it’s all just “ruffled feelings.”
Next comes Rebecca Traister with a piece that is, I believe, intended to be slightly more sympathetic, but is ultimately just as bad. First she explains that, just as we learned in Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, angry ladies simply need to “vent.” Our words don’t really mean anything; we just need someone to pay attention to our hurt fee-fees. With that setup, she goes on to enumerate some of the things women are pissed about (though she gets a lot of it wrong), but assures her readers that none of it actually matters. This is her closing:
In a recent New Yorker profile of Keith Olbermann, MSNBC chief Phil Griffin described how Clinton voters felt alienated from Olbermann’s anti-Clinton coverage: “He turned out to be a jerk and difficult and brutal. And that is how the Hillary viewers see him. It’s true. But I do think they’re going to come back. There’s nowhere else to go.”
Exactly. These angry people have nowhere else to go. So the safe expectation is that they will fall in line without much kicking and screaming. And that, ultimately, is why many of them are kicking and screaming. Yes, they’re going to vote for Obama. Of course they’ll vote for him. The truth is, they’ll probably love voting for him.* But after what they feel has been done to them — the way in which they were written off, marginalized and resented, their hopes mocked and their history-making ambitions dismissed as retrograde identity politicking — damned if they’re going to be nice girls about it.
Traister’s piece is a study in Third Wave feminism, and the reason she has no comprehension of what’s happening is because PUMAs are moved by the spirit of Second Wave. We’re the women who know that sexism doesn’t go away if you lie back and play nice; we know we have to fight and we’re ready for it. Third Wave, on the other hand, is all about accommodation: accommodating patriarchy, primarily — reassuring men that women might fuss a little bit but they won’t actually rock the boat. Maybe a few frowns under the lip gloss, in between the boyfriend’s porn tapes and episodes of Keith Olbermann, but that’s about it. Just a few little glossy frowns.
Somebody’s got a surprise coming.
*This sentence is so weird and freaky and offensive that I almost bolded it when I originally published the post. As you’ll see in the comments, I’m not the only one whose mind was boggled.
Posted by Violet under Election 2008, PUMA on June 23, 2008, 2:42 pm EST
In 1972 the Democrats became, somewhat half-heartedly, the party of women’s rights. Throughout the 1960s the Democrats had served as the de facto gathering ground for all the social justice movements of that era, and with the advent of the McGovern Commission rules, what had been informal became formal. The rules were changed, the convention was opened up, and suddenly all the various grassroots activists (feminists, civil rights workers, the anti-war crowd) had a seat at the table.
Ever since then the Democratic party has served, however inadequately, as the political home for people who care about human equality. Think of Jesse Jackson’s magnificent Rainbow Coalition: that has never been the reality, but for 35 years it has been the ideal. It’s what the Democrats are supposed to be.
But increasingly over those 35 years, we women have been taken for granted. Even the lukewarm support we enjoyed in the 1970s is just a distant memory. The Democrats no longer attract our votes so much as the Republicans repel them. We vote Democrat simply because the Republicans are even worse.
This is a wonderful situation for the Democratic party elites, of course. They don’t have to really fight for anything or take risks or work hard for their constituents; all they have to do is be marginally less bad than the Republicans. Or not even that: they just have to maintain the appearance of being less bad. For us, on the other hand, it’s a distinctly unwonderful situation. We’re stuck with riding this donkey (to borrow from Al Sharpton’s glorious speech) as far as it’ll take us, but there doesn’t seem to be a damn thing we can do to actually make the fucker go anywhere.
This has been the problem facing American feminists for years. Long before Hillary ran for President, long before Barack Obama smugly assured the world that Hillary’s supporters would vote for him in a flash, we had a problem. The Democrats weren’t earning our loyalty. They were taking us for granted, knowing that no matter how little they did to earn our support, every year women would still go to the polls and vote Democrat anyway because, remember, the Republicans are even worse.
It’s reached the point that we can’t even rely on the Democrats to stand up for our basic rights. Twenty-two Democratic Senators voted to confirm John Roberts as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 2005. A few months later, when Democrats failed to block the confirmation of batshit-crazy Samuel Alito, most feminists I know went into a state of barely-contained fury. Many of us had worked our hearts out for years to elect every Democrat we could, in no small measure because we were relying on the party to stop the erosion of our rights under a conservative Supreme Court. Lot of good it did us.
The netroots have been no better. New Democratic power-players like Markos Moulitsas have made it clear that women’s rights are at the absolute bottom of the priority list — any priority list. Kos himself famously invited those of us from the “women’s studies set” who disagreed to either don a burka or get the hell out of Dodge. (Meet the new boss: same as the old boss.)
What we needed, feminists said to each other, was leverage. How could we get leverage? How could we get the Democrats — old and new — to represent women’s interests? How could we create a situation where women’s votes weren’t assumed to be in the bag, but were a prize that Democrats would have to work for?
Voilà. Leverage is here.
It’s here because of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the shameful way she was treated — by the media, by the Obama camp, and, most damning of all, by the Democratic National Party. Even women who didn’t personally support the Clinton candidacy were nonetheless appalled by the Trashing of Hillary. It’s not that she lost; after all, losing is part of the game. It’s that she wasn’t beaten in a fair fight. She was treated like garbage, and she’s still being treated like garbage. (As of this writing, Howard Dean is refusing to let Hillary’s name be on the ballot for the first vote at the convention, a startling departure from the norm. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in this campaign and she earned more primary votes for President than any Democratic candidate in the history of this country. And the DNC won’t even let her name be on the ballot.) The huge swell of anger in the land is the righteous rage of millions of women — women who are armed and more than ready to punish the DNC. Over and over the message is being beamed straight to the powers-that-be on a laser light of pure anger: You don’t get to take our votes for granted anymore. No more.
It’s a glorious situation. It’s what we’ve needed for years. Finally, the Democrats have to work for our votes! Finally, we have leverage!
That’s why despite my anger at Hillary’s mistreatment, I am thrilled that so many women are drawing their line in the sand. I’m thrilled by the growing PUMAmovement (Party Unity My Ass). I’m thrilled that for the first time since the 1970s, women as a group are demanding that a national political party treat us with respect — or else. And they — we — are dead serious. We’re too old to be tricked or browbeaten or guilted. We’ve been riding the Democratic donkey faithfully for 35 years, and damn if that ass didn’t turn around and fuck us.
No more.
What’s interesting, though, is that many of my sister feminists — the prominent pundit types, not the regular Jane Doe types — haven’t yet grasped the import of what’s happening. Even some of those who supported Hillary are now heard to quietly mutter that it’s time to “unite the party.” They don’t recognize the great big lever in front of us because, well, we’ve never had a great big lever in front of us. We’ve talked about leverage for years, yearned for it, but never had it. Most of us have spent our entire political lives being taken for granted. We’re so used to voting Democrat no matter what that it’s become almost second nature.
Another reason, a more insidious one, is the powerful social conditioning that even feminists struggle to transcend. We women are supposed to get along, to not make waves, to put our own needs aside. To sacrifice for the greater good. To unite the party.
But “unite the party” is simply nice-speak for “give up your leverage.” The Democrats certainly know that, as do the Obama trolls who are now flooding our moderation queues with comments. Every time they say “unite the party,” what they’re really saying is, “please give up your leverage. Please just put down that gigantic lever you somehow got hold of and walk away. Please go back to the way it was before, when you voted for the Democrats no matter how much they took you for granted.”
Not bloody likely.
It’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out. My own prognostication is that the existing feminist movement and this new wave will remain largely separate, at least for awhile, and very possibly even oppose each other. That’s because modern feminism is dominated by a) young Third Wavers who support Obama anyway, and b) “establishment” feminists who are too plugged in to the money circuit to fight City Hall. This new wave is different: a big grassroots uprising of women of all ages whose latent feminism has been awakened by this election. This group is big and messy and fairly diverse in its political orientation (from leftists like me to near-Republicans), much the way the Second Wave was in the 1970s. But these women are united in their anger and their exasperation and their determination that now is the time to draw the line. No more.
