There are two PUMA PACs — one run by founder and Massachusetts mom Darragh Murphy that stands for People United Means Action, and one run by Will Bowers that stands for Party Unity My Ass. But they’re both are about rallying Hillary Clinton supporters believe she lost due to media sexism and who won’t support Barack Obama (who, PUMAS believe, were the principal agents of said sexism) are perhaps inclined to vote for John McCain.
Here‘s a New England Cable News report on Darragh that ran yesterday, and here’s a report by Pandagon’s Amanda Marcotte contending that “PUMAS are Swiftboats” and particularly that Darragh was a McCain contributor in 2000 (based on a donation record found on Open Secrets.com) and that there’s reason, therefore, to wonder about her true motives. Apart from being dead set against Obama, that is.
“I would like to argue that this PAC was not formed to support Clinton,” Marcotte writes, “but to support the media narrative about hysterical feminists, and to help the McCain campaign with (a) creating the illusion that McCain is moderate enough to attract the votes of feminist Clinton supporters and (b) reinforcing the narrative about how feminists are just hysterical bitches with no common sense who subsist on outrage, can√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t act in their own self-interest because of their feminine-addled brains, and can safely be ignored.”