The PUMA strategy

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By Dayvan Cowboy ⋅ September 3, 2008 ⋅

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Between the hissy dissatisfaction of Hillary Clinton supporters with the Obama nomination and the increasingly credible notion that there’s a non-zero probability that such disgruntled hillaryites will switch over to the McCain-Palin side, there’s a creeping sense of surrealism that is the fodder of conspiracy theories. This is one; I don’t have a shred of positive evidence to back it up, instead threading on the side of the motive-opporunity-means school of producing lines of investigation.

First of all, let us put the Hillary campaign in context. Though she was eager to play the gender card in rallying her “sisterhoods” (as worded by her at the DNCC), it’s far more likely that both the campaign and the unyielding resistence to give in after her probabilities mathematically lost, even, maybe hoping for a last-minute kendo coup — is a dynastic effort. While the GOP is much more likely to go by-any-means-necessary and unite instantaneously at any dominant strategy (much to the chagrin of fringeniks like Ron Paul), the Democratic Party has strands in far-out progressives like Kucinich, realists like Obama, populists like Kerry and so on. And at a time where the last of the Kennedys struggles for life, the space for a new democratic dinasty is open.

It’s at the very least symbolic that Ted Kennedy went out of his way (and out of his sick bed) to explicitly endorse Obama and the notion – seen by pundits across the spectrum — that this ammounted to passing the baton of the Kennedy dynasty. The shining (even if not entirely architected) success of the Bill Clinton decade-long stint as POTUS could at various points of the last decade have generated a powerful focal group within the democratic party — say, had Al Gore won the 2000 election or Hillary gotten nominated in 2008. On the other hand, kerryan populism failed dramatically in 2004, when Bush approval ratings were sinking, and other streams of democratic power have had scant success in the POTUS space over countless decades.

Ted Kennedy indeed did return as a modern Ulysses to reunite his party, at the cost of betting the precious Kennedy heritage at an unproven candidate mostly unaffiliated with the mainstream strands of his party.

So how did the notion of PUMA voters arise in first place?

Commentators mentioned over and over and over (like a monkey with a miniature cymbal) how internally focused was most of the DNCC. At more than one time it seemed that an independent Clinton party had showed up to endorse the Democratic ticket — something common at two-runoff multipartidary democracies. What other meaning can one ascribe to the notion of rejecting party unit? (For those out of the loop, PUMA means “Party Unity My Ass”)

This state of affairs is not necessarily undesirable. Both the GOP and the democats have traditionally united over common strategies, but prolonged primaries could emulate the mechanics of the much healthier two-runoff system, which gives spotlight space to a wider spectrum of ideologies and power projects.

But what does the putative “PUMA/Clinton party” stand for, really? This is really a bundle of questions: (A) in terms of ideology/ideals, how does it differ from “Obamism” (the mainsteam democratic line in 2008) enough that the “moral voter” will stray like a sailboat in the absence of an actual PUMA/C candidate? (B) how strategically sound is affirming its independence from the democratic party, in terms of getting PUMA/C ideologies and key people into either a democratic or republican tenure over 2008-2012? (C) how would a Hillary-endorsed (even if it’s covert and never surfaces) PUMA/C threat to the mainstream democratic line help further a Clinton dynastic project, either inside the party, on an improbable switch to the GOP or to an independent party?

The answers seem to be (A) it isn’t, (B) it isn’t and (C) it wouldn’t.

And what’s more, from the enthusiasm seen in the PUMA/C camp when Palin was announced as the GOP veep nominee, it would seem that “PUMA/C-ism” not much more than a gender card flying around in the wind.

Now, maybe PUMA/C-ism is a mirage, the residual image of a Clinton candidacy projected onto the sailboat of frustrated hillay-ites by biased-to-the-point-of-dishonesty media outlets — more overtly on blogs, more subtle in mainstream outfits. Maybe the frustration will dissolve, sexist soundbites will fade and strategic realism will surface unclouded.

Or maybe PUMA/C-ism is a distraction, pretending to solidify the “18 million cracks in the glass ceiling” soundbite into feminist ideology proper. Maybe PUMA-ism hot-glued itself to Hillary in first place because the gender card was the most efficient wedge to be sunk into a party that had converged from the earlier primaries pretty much at the same time the GOP did.

Saying Hillary is the architect of PUMA-ism is a long shot. But for one, the only reason why a rational politician would carry on after she had mathematically lost is a reasonable hope of a kendo coup at the DNCC floor. And the only way she could achieve that is by covertly hammering onto the wedge the PUMA movement sunk into the democratic voter base. This one is far out, and I want to believe that there is no such double spying in the building a ticket I wish would win.

On the other hand, who else has a deeper interest into — let’s decompose the acronym again — imploding “Party Unity” other than the GOP?

The putative “PUMA Strategy” — maybe it’s better to call it the “PUMA conspiracy theory” — starts with recruiting the gender card-carrying brand of feminists and “hockey moms” and send them to vote in the democratic primaries. I want to see numbers on this: how many women have changed their registration from GOP to DEM, from GOP to independent and from independent to DEM. Then, these faux democrats, building on Hillary Clinton’s unyielding ego, plant the seeds of divisiveness that required so much healing and even explicit intervention of party elders that came just short of chiding the PUMA camp for its un-democraticness.

Now they try to picture PUMA-ism as a stray sailboat pulled by the winds into supporting Palin, who is at the extreme opposite of everything the Clintons stood over the last decades — just because the required set of gonads is there. A gender card floats in the embrace of whirlwinds. If PUMA is more than a hissy fit, they did it. They managed to sabotage the democratic party.

Sabotage comes from the french “sabot”, meaning the wooden shoes anarchist workers threw at the machines; gonad cards do just fine in this case.

Or maybe there was never any sabotage, or any PUMA outside of some spinsters minds. American politicians and the american populace are just part of a whacked out video-game we sometimes like to watch. It’s not like they were real.

Breadcrumb trails:

Al Gore, America, biased-to-the-point-of-dishonesty media outlets, Blog, Blogs, Clinton party, Democracies, Democratic Party, Dissatisfaction, Focus, Gist, Hillary Clinton, Isso, Logs, Mac, Mainstream, Mom, Notion, Prova, Republican Party, Rh, Ron Paul, RTL, Sarah Palin, Satisfaction, Shred, Soundbite, Soundbites, Strands, Struggle, Ted Kennedy

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