Margaret Carlson, Time Magazine, 1993:

While Stephanopoulos is by far the most swooned over Clintonista, this insider audience cheered loudest for the Little People of the campaign.

...or maybe it's just because she did so well with the Hispanic vote...

I'm not buying it, Dana. I've seen both terms used to refer to followers of the Senatrix.

"Girly"? It comes from "Sandanista", as far as I know.

Uh, "Sandinista" with an 'i', I should say.

Oh come on, you're hallucinating. That's just Spanish. The noun happens to be in the feminine grammatical gender (a fact I doubt more than a small minority of English speakers would recognize) but it does not refer to women, it is neutral in terms of the gender of the people to whom it refers. (For example, in Spanish, a male police officer is policia.) And the formation refers to the follower of a movement. I suppose it might seem vaguely threatening to Americans in the sense that we've usually seen it in connection with revolutionaries such as the Sandinistas or, to go further back in history, Zapatistas (note not the slightest "girly" connotation in either, BTW), but given the hunger of the electorate for change I doubt that had any ill effect.

So yeah, you're just sayin', and it's BS.

Thank you dry_fish, I knew this had been used in '90s but didn't have the energy to look it up.

Look at Google News timelines. There's consistent use of the term 'Clintonista' since the 1994.

It's a play on Sandinista that originated on the right I believe but was quickly adopted by the press.

It's probably strengthened too by the popularity of "barista", which in Italian may be masculine or feminine indifferently (like "conformista", etc.).

Listen up Dana Goldstein.

The reference is not girly it's to central and south American guerrillas who would rather tear apart their country than pursue a compromise. I should know because I began using it way back on fucking super-duper Tuesday.

You know, maybe cries of sexism would be more heeded if they weren't invoked at every single turn.

Have you noticed the switch to the robotic sounding 'Clintonite' from the swashbuckling 'Clintonista' that used to get used for Bill?

Or maybe how the clouds that look like Hillary aren't quite as high as the other ones?

I always thought they were trying to remind us of another husband/wife political duo with a play on peronista.

No, but they both sound like derogatory, right-wing radio terms to me.

(Seriously, "Clintonite" is supposed to sound positive? It sounds like some rock designed to remove someone's superpowers. How Dowdesque can you get?)

Which has been used by Chris Matthews's Expiring Contract and when?

I also remembner it from the '90s and it came from Sandinista (big in the 1980's), probably from the right. Were you around then Dana?

Thanks for the parody of bad journalism driven by identity politics. We in the Marxist vanguard know that identity politics is the enemy of true revolution. By exposing it's vacuousness, you help the rebel cause.

That was parody, right?

'Perotista' was frequently used to describe the supporters of Ross Perot back in 1992. So if it is girly and slightly threatening now, how come nobody took it that way then?

I remember Clintonistas being used in the 90s. It was a term wingnuts used to dis them using a socialist tag—think Sandinistas. I seriously doubt it'sa sexist thing.

And I've never heard Clintonite until your post. Sounds like a cleaning solution.

Neither has the ring, though, and the truth, of Obamabot.

In the '80s, we used to refer in print to any avid fan of the 40th President as a Reaganista, just to hear the howls.

The names for the Obama supporters were better this time around.

Obamabots
Oborg
Obambis
Barackjobs
BarryOs
Hopemongers

My followers were referred to as Pinochetistas. Aprende castellano, mujer!

Aii! Es muy caliente aqui. Baja el calor, Mefistófeles!

Is there another common English word formed by adding "-ista" to an English word (so "Sandinista" and "barista" don't count)? Other than "fashionista"?

Give it up, Matt W. For one thing, 'barista' and 'Sandinista' are English words. For another, 'fashionista' itself came from 'Sandinista,' just like 'Clintonista' did. There's nothing to see here.

Who the hell uses "fashionista" as a common word? If there were such a group of people, it seems like it would be particularly small and specialized--like oh-so-hip magazine writers and possibly Maureen Dowd. Give it up.

Put too many links in the original comment so here goes again.

"Fashionista" gets over 6 million Google hits. So yeah, it's a word.

"Barista" and "Sandinista" are English words, but they were taken over directly from other languages, rather than formed by suffixing "-ista" to a pre-existing English word. (Otherwise "barista" would mean someone who serves beer.)

"Clintonista" did originate in 1992, derived from Latino bomb-throwers, but I don't think it's crazy to think that its current use has something to do with the feminine associations of "Fashionista" (which did originate in 1993, you're right). If you can come up with another "-ista" word in common American usage that wasn't taken over wholesale from another language, that would provide evidence against me.

I should say, Latin-American revolutionaries, not Latino.

If you can come up with another "-ista" word in common American usage that wasn't taken over wholesale from another language, that would provide evidence against me.

'Barista' and 'Sandinista' are both examples of English words ending in '-ista' that have no "girly" overtones. The fact that they originated in other languages is not relevant to this point, so your condition here is pointless.

IOW, you can't think of another word in current American usage that's etymologically like "Clintonista," besides "fashionista." Thanks.

There doesn't need to be another example, because the cited ones are sufficient to prove the point, and your attempt to rule them out is based on an irrelevant consideration.

Nonetheless, as already pointed out by others, I could cite "Perotista" or "Peronista," but you're probably going to again try to disqualify those by applying a similarly irrelevant rule (e.g., that they aren't in "current American usage"). Fun game and all, but we probably both have better things to do.

What dude said.

Indeed -- that is, I'm going to say that since "Perotista" hasn't been uttered by anyone outside this thread for twelve years, it doesn't really affect the fact that the closest English word associated with "Clintonista" is "fashionista"; and we both have better things to do.