Maureen Dowd
Well I guess our conference last week in DC didn’t go unnoticed by the press. Although they still characterize us as “fringe” and “angry women”, we don’t sweat the insults. The fact that they are taking notice is its own reward. I don’t think theNew York Observer would bother to write a two page article about us if we were some “fringe” dead-ender group. I don’t see them giving this kind of attention to the Green Party, for example. Heck, we’re getting more press than the Greens, Bob Barr, Ron Paul, and Ralph Nader combined. My guess is that they see us as a
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big enough threat to be a spoiler this year, and they’ll do anything they can to demoralize us. What they don’t understand is that it only strengthens our resolve.
The mostly female collection of activists who continue to rally around the cause of a decommissioned White House bid can’t exactly be described as an organized movement. There are the wealthy donors who work within official party channels and talk calmly about reforming the party’s nominating process or protecting against gender bias in future elections. Their level of hostility toward the Obama campaign varies. And then there are the outright rejectionists: the raucous bloggers and founders of groups like PUMA (Party Unity My Ass) who plan to disrupt the convention and have declared all-out war against Mr. Obama and his supporters, who they accuse of making death threats and leaving dead bunny rabbits on doorsteps in the middle of the night.
Doesn’t the text practically drip with disdain? In this elitist cosmos, the rich women who object can be forgiven because their class gives them the privilege to take a stand on principle (however misguided they might be). Maureen Dowd comes to mind. “If only you women would get rich like me, sexism wouldn’t be a problem, plus you could afford to make yourself PRETTY!”. (Not that I’m comparing the women noted in this article to Dowd, but that’s how the author views them obviously, as would Dowd herself, no doubt). But those women bloggers and PUMAs just don’t know their place do they? How dare they stick their noses into something like politics for God’s sake?? I can almost hear the tone of the voice of the author of this article, snidely spoken through gritted teeth, oozing with condescension. It reminds me of the Dukes in the movie Trading Places. We little people should just stick to our cookouts and our American Idol and let them handle the governing of our country. But the author is right about one thing. This movement is not highly organized. That is because it really is a grassroots movement. The decentralized quality of it is something to be celebrated, not an indication of weakness. That just goes to show you how out of touch our press has become.
Not to mention the fact that they can’t imagine why we would think that Hillary was treated badly during the primary.
What they share, without exception, is a profound disappointment at the way the primary turned out, and a revulsion at the way they perceive Mrs. Clinton to have been treated.
That has been enough to establish a de facto echo chamber that has proven to be a headache for Mr. Obama as his campaign tries to project Democratic unity ahead of the convention during the last week of August.
I’ll leave it up to you guys in comments to point out the many very REAL abuses of Senator Clinton during the primary. The author of this article not only dismisses it as mere perception, he doesn’t even have the stomach to name it. Any mention of sexism or misogyny amongst their class is strictly verboten, even though they freely throw around terms like racism and bigotry.
After several paragraphs about the very wealthy Hillary supporters who will not support Obama, the author turns his sights to us little people:
In that regard, at least, Ms. de Rothschild has something in common with the anti-Obama bloggers and organizers, about 60 of whom gathered at the Country Inn hotel near Dulles airport in Washington on Aug. 9 and 10 for a leadership meeting to coordinate strategy for protesting the Democratic convention. (The meeting was closed to the press, organizers said, to avoid infiltration by Obama sympathizers.)
The attendees came from the ranks of the creators of PUMA and dozens of Web sites, including HillaryClintonforum, pumaparty, AlwaysForHillary, the Denver Group—which plans to run anti-Obama commercials during the convention—and a blog radio show called No Quarter (featuring a “Reading Rezko” edition). Many of the sites feature videos of pumas baring their teeth in the wild.
In this parallel universe, Mr. Obama, or NObama, as he is often called, is a misogynistic fraud. The DNC and other Democratic officials were in on it, too, conspiring against Mrs. Clinton to advance their own political agenda.
In one typical video, Howard Dean is juxtaposed with images of Dopey from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; Donna Brazile is compared to Ursula the Sea Witch from The Little Mermaid; and Nancy Pelosi morphs into Cruella De Vil from 101 Dalmations.
Again the author doesn’t want to paint the whole picture, just the part that supports his theory that we’re all a bunch of pissed off women with a nasty streak (Hell hath no fury….). Of course there is plenty of snark in the pumasphere, but that’s true of the blogosphere as a whole (I don’t see anyone decrying the treatment of GWB). In fact I think our very own SM might get some inspiration from the description above! What they won’t quote, however, are some of the very serious issues we have raised about the destruction of the core democratic principles that our party used to uphold. They won’t mention the events of the RBC meeting, EVER. That would put our “snark” in a whole new light. But as I said, the mere fact that they’ve taken notice is encouraging.
Long-term, the fringe groups are talking about purging the Democratic Party of Obama supporters or even starting their own third party. Short-term, they are focused on ruining the convention.
“Hi everybody. I hope that the Denver convention will be turned into the American equivalent of Tiananmen Square,” wrote a commenter named “johninca” on a Web site announcing PUMA’s 2008 “convention” in Washington.
In an interview, Darragh Murphy, the founder of PUMAPac, called the meeting crucial to counteract Mr. Obama’s aggressive and prolific online supporters.
“I started saying this was more than my candidate versus your candidate,” she said. “We need to become a movement, too.”
That commenter, johninca, would be our very own poet laureate. He was on the radio program last night if any of you got a chance to tune in. I’m sure they would like to paint his analogy as an extreme comparison, typical of what they call a “fringe” movement. I, however, think it is quite apt. Tiananmen Square was nothing short of heroic. There were people using their own bodies and voices as a last line of defense against tyranny and corruption. We are going to Denver to let the Democratic party know that WE run this party, not the party bosses.
Angry Malkinite: PUMAs are mean!!!
WE the PEOPLE rule this country. WE the PEOPLE will not have our voices and our votes taken away from us. And Darragh is being diplomatic when it comes to describing the thuggery and threats of Obama’s online henchmen. We seem to even have attracted our own little Malkinite here at The Confluence from some sad, hate-filled, and yes, fringe anti-puma website. And if the author of the article was trying to paint us as paranoid by saying that the conference had been moved and closed to the press to avoid Obamabot infiltration, a commenter on this very sad, creepy hatesite admitted to stalking us. And Will, you might want to rescreen your email list….
Seeking the answer to that question, I roamed the halls of the Marriott Wardman Hotel Saturday looking for the PUMA Conference, doing my best Michael Moore “Roger and Me” impersonation. “No PUMA conference is registered here,” they told me at the front desk. They allegedly told a Hearst reporter the same thing a day earlier. There are no reports yet on what PUMA may be cooking up for the conventions.
Today I received this email from Bower: “The conference was moved to a new location. We made an agreement with all our participants that we would treat the proceedings as confidential. There was a great deal of information that was generated that our members want to disseminate to their colleagues in their own way.”
Speaking of Will, he gets the recognition he deserves in the column as well. And one of Hillary’s most vocal supporters, Ricki Lieberman, is also quoted
At the D.C. meeting with Ms. Murphy was Will Bower, the founder of PUMA08. A former administrator of Hillary Clinton’s Facebook group, “Hillary Clinton for President; One Million Strong,” he participated in the conference call on the night Mrs. Clinton suspended her campaign. That original 5 p.m. strategy call has now become a weekly event dubbed the “puma prowl,” during which rank and file members get their marching orders about what DNC switchboard to paralyze by mass-calling or which superdelegates to bombard with e-mail….
Ms. Lieberman, a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat who has served as campaign treasurer for Representative Jerry Nadler, thinks she is helping the party by vetting Mr. Obama. She dismissed Mrs. Clinton’s calls for her followers to get behind Mr. Obama as a “mixed message” and lit up when the subject of a video of Mrs. Clinton speaking at a San Francisco fund-raiser came up.
In the video, Mrs. Clinton appeared to agree with the suggestion that her name be included on a roll call in Denver, to help with the process of emotional “catharsis” for her followers. Like many of the diehard Clinton loyalists fighting to get Mrs. Clinton’s name onto the roll call during the nomination, Ms. Lieberman took the senator’s remarks as a green light to continue.
“I really believe she will be the nominee—I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t,” said Ms. Lieberman, who met Mr. Obama once on the campaign trail. (“He didn’t pay a bit of attention to me,” she said. “He’s tall and looked around for someone more important.”)
Given the vitriol, smears, and outright lies that have been put out there by Obama and his bullies, I would say this article is quite tame by comparison. I don’t expect that to continue to be the case. Each day, from now until Denver, they are going to try to paint us as racist, crazy, bitter, hysterical, sore-losers, humorless, emotional women.
Don’t let their psy-ops get you down. Remember it is driven by one thing: Fear. They fear us and that makes us powerful. We are going to take this convention by storm and take back our party. And Nancy, you’ll have to go, but you can keep the fur….
crossposted at The Confluence
