Ahh…spite.

06Aug08

I love spite.  I try not to subscribe to it myself, but from a third-party perspective, I find it amusing that someone would take the time and effort to carry out malicious acts that are misguided and/or which provide little or nothing to gain.

 

Enter the PUMAs – and I don’t mean Puma concolor, member of the Felidae family.  I mean “Party Unity My Ass”.  (I know that the official committee name is “People United Means Action”, but who are we kidding?)

 

Now, the PUMAs themselves will argue that their movement is not an act of spite, but rather political protest against a flawed democratic process that was unfair to their preferred candidate.  Fair enough.  I like political activism.  But organizing a movement, that is in opposition to the presumptive Democratic nominee who has viewpoints almost completely in line with your preferred candidate and who was elected by the party’s voters in accordance with the current Democratic guidelines, in order to help the other party’s candidate who seemingly does not represent your best interests, while your preferred candidate herself is publicly stating that such a movement is against her wishes?…Sounds like spite to me.

 

With its members’ opinions ranging from Pro-Hillary to Anti-Obama to Anti-DNC , PUMA doesn’t seem to have a clear mission statement, however, it appears that the general opinion is that the 2008 Democratic Primary was a sham due to 1) misogyny and sexism in the media, 2) an unfair ruling by the Rules and Bylaws Committee on seating Florida and Michigan delegates 3)and unfair treatment by the party leadership which influenced the outcome of the election.

 

Really?

 

With respect to sexism in the media, admittedly, I do remember instances where the political analysts, in moments of ground-breaking journalism, were discussing Hillary’s need to soften her image and “fem it up a little.”  In fact, after one of the debates, I believe Wolf Blitzer and Carol Costello were talking about Hillary’s bright pink jacket.  Ok, so gender was an issue…but is this unexpected?  Hillary was the first legitimate female presidential candidate.  Of course people are going to make a big deal about her being a woman.  The fact that reporters were commenting on Hillary’s outfits doesn’t seem to me to be an indication of sexism in the media, but rather an indication that the media has generally abandoned journalism for the pursuit of headlines (i.e. pants suits, lapel pins, etc.).  Additionally, you can’t honestly tell me that the media’s constant onslaught of stories regarding race and/or religion with respect to Obama didn’t outweigh the gender discussions.  Besides, if this is an issue of sexism, it’s a problem with the media and not the DNC.  Are the PUMA members angry that the Democratic Party leaders didn’t speak out against the suggested sexism in the media?  Because, I don’t believe that the party’s involvement would have had helped.  If Howard Dean would have addressed the apparent sexism in the media and asked all of the reporters and analysis to please steer clear of discussing gender, it would have had the exact opposite effect.  Gender would have been all that the media discussed for weeks.

 

With respect to seating the Florida and Michigan delegates, there’s no real need to go into too much detail as it has already been discussed at length.  I will note, however, that in my opinion the RBC should have decided not to seat any of the Florida or Michigan delegates, which would have adhered to the initial decision back in December.  Unfortunately, they didn’t which does give weight to Harold Ickes argument that by allocating delegates to Obama the committe has decided to remove four delegates won by Hillary.  So, if the PUMA argument is that the allocation decided upon by the RBC is unfair and, instead, the Florida and Michigan delegates should not be seated, I can get on board.  However, taking any other action is equally unfair and that definitely includes counting the Florida and Michigan delegates based the election results, when there was no campaigning in Florida and only Clinton, Dodd, Gravel, Kucinich, undecided, and write-in were on the ballot in Michigan.  I honestly cannot understand how anyone can believe that ignoring an initial decision that was made with the consent of the Democratic candidates to not seat the delegates from Michigan and subsequently giving Hillary her delegates without allocating any delegates to Obama is even remotely fair — even with the compelling arguments of Harriet Christian.

 

The third complaint that Obama was elected due to improper influence by the party leadership and not according to the voters’ wishes also seems to be without merit.  If PUMA has a problem with the current system, so be it.  Don’t like caucuses?  That’s fine, but that doesn’t mean that Obama wasn’t democratically elected because it doesn’t discount the fact that more individuals voted for Obama then for Clinton under the system as it stands.   A decision by the party leaders to ignore the caucus results when it favors one candidate over the other?  That would be an undemocratic election by the party leadership.

 

In my opinion, what it really comes down to is that Hillary supporters feel that she was forced out of the race early because the leadership started calling for her dropping-out before the convention.  Again, I will admit that there was a lot of talk that Hillary should get out of the race, but again, most of this was a result of the media outlets making it a headline.  Additionally, she was never “forced” out and, if you listened closely, there were a lot of individuals that were supportive of her continuing her campaign.  The main reason that party leaders, especially Pelosi and Dean, wanted the campaign to end before the convention was because they believed that a drawn-out primary would tear the Democratic Party apart.  Hillary’s supporters’ response to such a claim?…That would never happen, there will be plenty of time to heal the party!  And what happened as a result of a drawn-out primary season?  An organization called PUMA.  Yes, that seems right.  We’ll show the party leaders that they were wrong in thinking that a prolonged race would divide the party by forming an organization called “Party Unity My Ass”.

 

The other cry is that the DNC is too shortsighted to see that Hillary is the better candidate to beat John McCain.  My problem with this argument is that on November 4^th, the PUMAs seemingly have three options consistent with their goal:  vote for McCain, don’t vote, or write in Hillary’s name.  If McCain wins, because of a large enough number of PUMAs don’t vote for Obama, it doesn’t prove that the DNC was too shortsighted to realize that Obama can’t beat McCain.  Instead, it just shows that PUMAs have created a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Obama doesn’t have enough votes to beat McCain.  Want proof?  On voting day, just to make our point, a couple of million of us will not vote for Obama and you’ll see.  It’s synonymous to a proponent of gun control stating that guns are dangerous and then in order to prove his point he embarks on a shooting spree.

 

All of this aside, wouldn’t it be interesting if this PUMA operation succeeds?  It’s no secret that many of the PUMAs consider themselves to be feminists and, accordingly, feel very strongly about women’s reproductive rights and yet they ignore the warnings from fellow feminists like Katha Pollitt and Nancy Keenan who have publicly stated that electing McCain may be the end of Roe vs. Wade.  McCain himself said that “[i]t will fall to the next president to nominate hundreds of qualified men and women to the federal courts, and the choices we make will reach far into the future”.  So, wouldn’t it be interesting if in the name of feminism, the PUMAs lead to overturning what many feminists consider to be a landmark case in defending the rights of women?  ‘Cause if there’s one thing that I love more than spite, it’s spite that backfires.

Filed under: Politics   |  3 Comments
Tags: Barack, Clinton, Hillary, Obama, PUMA