Now we have an answer.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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besides that goddamned Rothschild woman and some deranged bloggers, there weren’t many.
Hey BooMan, speaking of PUMAs, guess who is the latest candidate for SecState?
This keeps getting better and better.
Yeah – there goes the Middle East!
Change you can… stay the same in!
Zandar, I like the post on this subject on your blog. You may be right that the promise was made before the election as the price for the Clintons’ support. Rahm Emanuel and now Hillary… things look very grim for the hopes we might have had for a new American approach to the world.
And another thing – the established candidates mentioned by the WaPo – John Kerry, Bill Richardson, Chuck Hagel and Sam Nunn – all lack credibility in my view. Bad choices. American foreign policy needs a break from the same old political establishment.
Oh God, I hope not. The only good line in the article was this:
But I’m still pushing for Bill Clinton as UN Ambassador.
Providing answers to questions unasked. It’s amazing that this is still receiving any attention.
Ostensibly, a PUMA was a lifelong Democrat who left the Party because Obama got the nomination.
My back of the envelope calculations come to about 1.9% of the electorate: McCain got 46% of the electorate, 16% of that 46% said they would have supported Hillary and 26% of those were Democrats gives about 1.9% of the electorate. It would have been interesting to also calculate Democrats who would otherwise have voted but chose not to vote, and those who normally don’t vote Green and have no allegiance to the Green Party per se but like to fancy themselves as left wing in some fashion and just could not vote Republican.
The profile that emerges from this description fits the profile of Democrats I talked to while canvasing who said they would write in Hillary’s name, not vote or vote McCain. As a general rule they tended to be 50ish, slightly more female than male and more or less “middle class” and appeared to have some college education (granted my canvasing is hardly a scientific sample).
What isn’t clear is the ideology of the PUMAs. Were they so loyal to Hillary or did Hillary represent something else? Why did the experience argument matter so much?
Ideologically, Hillary’s campaign was hard to characterize: on domestic issues, she was arguably marginally to the left of Obama, arguably to the right on foreign policy.
Parts of her message were hard right in a way that I think has been underanalyzed and underappreciated. She adopted a McCarthyist tone and also helped to reinforce the meme of American exceptionalism. The McCarthyist campaign against Obama and the portrayal of him as an effete elitist who is soft on terrorism and not fully an American began with Hillary “white people will vote for me-I’ll nuke Iran” Clinton.
Since much of the PUMA message was associated with hard right McCarthyists like Larry Johnson, the PUMA ideology seems to be in essence Blue Dog Democrat or Liebercrat. Independents who are moderate to liberal on domestic social issues as well as Republicans who are moderate to liberal on domestic social issues but hawkish on defense would have found this message appealing-and it also to some degree explains their support for McCain who has an undeserved reputation as a moderate on social issues.
The question remains whether the PUMA phenomenon was ever real in the sense of representing an actual group of people with real issues and a coherent ideology-or an entirely astroturfed movement cooked up by McCarthyists like Larry Johnson.
The most disturbing conversation I ever had with a PUMA was with a 50ish female colleague (PhD in American studies) who considers herself a strong feminist and is co-director of the women’s studies center at my University.
What was disturbing was to hear someone who normally characterizes herself as a progressive and who in fact teaches a course that undermines the doctrine of American exceptionalism bitterly attack Obama for his association with Ayres and Wright and defend Fox News. This same colleague went on to admit that a vote for McCain was a vote for hell, but she could take it. The prospect of McCain appointing another Supreme Court Justice who could overturn Roe v. Wade was dismissed and she asserted McCain would govern from the center. She was unsure whether she would vote for McCain or for the Communist Party. I left off talking about politics with her after that conversation so I have no idea if Palin’s selection sobered her up any.
I know many of us would like the PUMA phenomenon to go away and fortunately, it largely failed. But I think it pays us in the long run to understand it and to understand the role that the Clintons and the Blue Dogs played in creating it. The net effect I would argue was to force Obama to the center right on foreign policy and deligitimize public discussion on topics such as Palestinian statehood. The attacks on Rashid Khalidi were no accident.
Very good.
Excellent analysis.
A good analysis of an godawful article. Notice he didn’t ask the question that wasn’t pleasing to the PUMAs – how many Obama voters would have gone for McCain had Hillary been the nominee?
Guarantee that that’s a nontrivial amount.
The survey did ask the question, but it was buried in the article:
I actually wonder whether the 7% of Obama voters who say they wouldn’t have voted is low. Sure, some percentage of long-time registered Democrats and Independents were strong Obama supporters and may not have seen much difference between Clinton and McCain. But the Obama campaign mobilized so many new people, especially young people, to get involved in the process and to register and vote. Once registered and energized, many of those new voters may have been willing to vote for Hillary. But if Hillary had taken the nomination early on, how many of those new voters would have even been motivated to register in the first place?
I wrestled with this throughout the primaries.
First, it would have depended on how she won. Second, a lot would have depended on how Obama and others handled it.
When the primaries started, I was grudgingly willing to vote for Hillary in the general-though that is all I was ever willing to do. About the time we got to the Ohio Primaries, my willingness was less. After the Charlie Gibson debate I swore if she won I would not only vote Green I would actively work Green.
But that was when passions were high. It’s hard to imagine my ever having been willing to do something that would have given the White House to McCain. In the end, preserving the balance on the Supreme Court may have been the final tipping point. So I would have voted Hillary in all likelihood.
I would *not* have made phone calls, canvased or otherwise lifted a finger for her.