PUMA Patrol

Ok, I looked up "PUMA" and found it stands for the very classy "Party Unity My Ass." That's beautiful, isn't it? I like my version better.

I also just perused McCain's abysmal record on women's issues. This link comes from the Obama campaign and appears to be accurate. Women who will vote for McCain just to get back at Barack Obama are throwing the rest of us under the so-called Straight-Talk Express.

Now, maybe it is a stereotype that the PUMAs are all baby boomer women, but I still think there is a big generational conflict here. Hillary and her PUMAs were all about electing a woman because she's a woman. Yes, I know they believe she's more qualified, but the real pain comes from the fact that we were thisclose to nominating the first woman, and the cool handsome young male upstart took it all away. So obsessed with the retro-feminist factor, they can't even appreciate what it means to black and biracial kids across the country that they might soon have a President who looks like them.

PUMAs seem to be mired in an outdated version of the women's movement the way Presidential politics for decades were mired in Vietnam (and I'm afraid that measuring contest's not over yet, with McCain and Biden on the tickets). Is it a coincidence that blouses with bow-ties are back in the stores? Is it all about getting a woman into a man's world or are the issues more nuanced now? That's not to say it won't be a milestone when we finally do have a woman President or that the women of the sixties didn't break down doors for the rest of us to walk right through. But we have to live in the present, and the fact is, now women are walking through those doors as breadwinners for our families and as caregivers, going to work with our kids and our infants and our breast pumps and yes, our ambitions. There's a lot more to this election than feminist symbolism. There's modern feminist reality.

Frankly, I don't want these sore losers dictating my and my kids' future. Here on the ground, we need expanded and paid family leave, equal pay for equal work, access to universal preschool and childcare, a woman's right to choose, sex education that's based in science, not religious belief. We need the Hillary feminists of yesterday to get with today's program. Yeah, that means get over it. (Hey guys - the same goes for Vietnam.)

If PUMAs vote for McCain or sit this one out, they can only blame themselves when it all falls apart. Of course, many of them will be comfortably sitting back on their pensions and Social Security, plotting for Hillary's comeback in 2012. Their daughters and grandchildren will pay the real price.