Clinton supporters vow to fight on

Erika Niedowski, Washington Bureau Chief

• Last Updated: June 07. 2008 11:34PM UAE / June 7. 2008 7:34PM GMT

WASHINGTON // Hillary Clinton’s official acknowledgment of defeat and call for party unity finally came yesterday, but William Bower wanted none of it.

A Clinton supporter and contributor for whom voting Democratic comes as natural as breathing, Mr Bower very nearly refused to attend the announcement. He knew Mrs Clinton was going to ask him to do what he considered unthinkable: support Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee.

“I don’t want to hear her say that, and I know she will,” he said before the event, which was held in the National Building Museum in Washington. “I don’t want to be told to vote for Obama.”

“I love her, and I would do 95 per cent of what she’d ask,” Mr Bower said. But not that.

How many Democrats there are like Mr Bower is Mr Obama’s newest worry after a passionate primary that, while bringing out millions of new Democrats, also split the party in two. Both Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton each got nearly 18 million votes.

With Mr Obama securing enough delegate support last week to clinch the nomination, the Democratic Party establishment, including lawmakers who had vigorously campaigned for Mrs Clinton, began lining up behind him. And they are all promising that the party will heal and unify, and quickly at that.

But even as Mrs Clinton was preparing to formally concede the race yesterday and throw her weight behind her former rival, various coalitions of her most loyal supporters were considering ways to still, somehow, back her – no matter the consequence in November.

“In the hearts of her ardent supporters, we know she’s the best one this time or 2012, which is why we’re willing to put [Senator John] McCain in for four years and [then] have another go at it,” said Thuc Nguyen, 32, a graduate student at the University of California who is part of a burgeoning group known as PUMA, which stands for Party Unity My A—.

Another organisation, HillaryGrassrootsCampaign.com, is urging her to continue running for president, as an independent. “Why vote for McCain or Obama, when you can vote for Hillary!” the website says. “Our mission is to keep our eye on the prize and that prize is having Hillary in the White House,” said Robin Carlson, a spokesman for that group.

Another group, WriteHillaryIn.com, wants people to do just that on the ballot in those states that allow it.

Pam Hamilton, a Clinton supporter who works in sales in Medford, Oregon, and who started a website called ClintonDems, said a lot of women are feeling the four words about party unity that gave PUMA its acronym. She, and others, talk of Mr Obama in terms of inexperience and lack of substance, while complaining of unfair treatment of Mrs Clinton, both by the Democratic National Committee and by the media.

Ms Hamilton suggested she was not sure whom she will vote for – “My dream is that somehow Hillary gets on the ticket” – or whether she will even vote. But the longer she talked, the more it seemed she already had made up her mind. “With neither of them really appealing to my sensibilities, I have to look at who’s more experienced and who do I feel most comfort with, and it’s John McCain,” she said. “We know him.”

It is unclear what effect the PUMA crowd will have in November, if any, but its ranks are mobilising. Ms Nguyen helped launch last week what she described as the group’s official website, gopumaparty.com, although there are several ad hoc offshoots.

“We are leaving the Democratic Party in droves, and registering as Republicans and independents,” reads one. “The Democratic Party may laugh at us now, but they will not be laughing in November when their ‘chosen one’ is defeated in a landslide by all of us bitter, uneducated, backwards, gun-toting, God-fearing AMERICANS!

“It’s not over for millions of us, Hillary,” says an entry on another pro-PUMA site. “Lay low, my lady, but never give up hope. Maybe, just maybe, the Republicans will do what we have been praying for, and find the information that will destroy Obama’s candidacy before August.”

Mr Bower, a blogger from Washington, whose profile page on the networking site Facebook shows the PUMA “mascot”, a snarling puma, does not relish what he intends to do at the ballot box come November. Still, he feels it must be done.

“It’s important to me that Obama does not succeed,” he said. “And the best way of doing that is voting for John McCain.”

eniedowski@thenational.ae