Democrats Need PUMAs Back

White women aren’t particularly excited about the 2010 midterms. In a recent Gallup poll, a paltry 27% of them expressed excitement about the upcoming election. Gallup’s explanation for this was simple: Men are more likely to be Republican, and Republicans are more enthusiastic this year. But Linda Hirshman has another explanation: “Remember the PUMAs?” she writes in the Daily Beast. “I wonder if we declared them an endangered species too soon.”

PUMAs—the white women so angry about Hillary Clinton’s defeat that they voted McCain—didn’t wind up swinging the 2008 election. But don’t underestimate their festering anger. Many still remember “the shit liberal women had to listen to from their friends and boyfriends” during the 2008 primary. Now, “like real pumas, the women who waited to see are just tiptoeing away, catlike, from the battle.” (More Hillary Clinton stories.)