ImportError: cannot import name basestring

Getting this trying to run fontmake:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/Users/user/Library/Python/2.7/bin/fontmake", line 7, in
from fontmake.__main__ import main
File "/Users/user/Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages/fontmake/__main__.py", line 19, in
from fontmake.font_project import FontProject
File "/Users/user/Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages/fontmake/font_project.py", line 41, in
from defcon import Font
File "/Users/user/Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages/defcon/__init__.py", line 10, in
from defcon.objects.font import Font
File "/Users/user/Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages/defcon/objects/font.py", line 6, in
from fontTools.misc.py23 import basestring
ImportError: cannot import name basestring