Angry PUMAs on the prowl in Denver

Kennedy said that most of her Hillary-supporting compatriots are torn about what they are going to do. "They want a unified party," she said, "but this was the first woman to win a primary -- and then primary after primary after primary. I think how we unify the party is to recognize the history that this candidate made." Kennedy said she had not talked to any Clinton delegates who have any interest in causing a disturbance or making a scene. She said she is not going to a pro-Hillary march scheduled for Tuesday morning, "only because I can see exactly how the media will portray it."

When asked about how Hillary loyalists are being portrayed in the media -- as hysterics and harridans, Kennedy choked up with frustration and sadness. "It makes it so much harder," she said. "This is the right thing to do for the party. I'm not disruptive. I believe this is the best way to recognize what Hillary symbolizes. I was elected to come to this convention and vote for Hillary Clinton."

This was precisely the argument put forth by New York Hillary delegate Rosina Rubin, who said directly, "This is not about anger. This is not about a lack of desire for party unity. We all want to elect a Democrat in November. But why wouldn't her name be placed in nomination? She is the only woman who has ever come this far. Her achievement represents a giant moment in American history. We just want to celebrate that."

Rubin, a small-business owner from suburban, purplish Rockland County, said that people have stopped her on the street and begged her not to give up their vote. "We had a huge turnout in the primary, and they turned out for Hillary. The Democratic Party tells us that a delegate's job is to in good conscience reflect the sentiments of the people who elected them. I don't know why they equate an expression of democracy with ruining the convention. Hopefully Hillary supporters will be respectful, but I don't think it's disrespectful to cast the vote I was sent here to cast."

Talking to these women, I began to believe that the threat of PUMAs, or aggressive Hillary supporters who planned to take over the convention, was a full-blown myth. I couldn't find any; I hadn't seen any. I half suspected that they were the creation of a media anxious to gin up a story in which the villains were a bunch of grumpy old white chicks.

But that was before I left the confines of the official indoor events and stepped out into the wide world of public protest and freedom of expression. And before the news of Monday's shifting policies on the roll call vote began to leak out, and before Hillary supporters lining the streets of downtown Denver heard convoluted versions of what was likely to happen.

On a downtown street corner, Colorado Clinton delegate Sonya Jaquez Lewis was comparing what she knew with Washington Clinton delegate Michael Wagner. "I heard we're not going to be able to say 'And the great state of Colorado...,'" marveled Jaquez Lewis. Her mother -- a delegate for Ted Kennedy at the 1980 Democratic Convention, where Kennedy supporters were allowed to vote for their candidate -- told her daughter she was surprised that Clinton delegates were allegedly going to be denied the same opportunity. Wagner, another delegate for Ted Kennedy in 1980, also expressed shock at the lack of a roll call. "Ted Kennedy was challenging an incumbent president," he recalled, "and he was allowed to have a roll call. I just can't believe what's happening here. Party leadership wants to show that we're a party of unity, but what it's doing is fracturing the party."

A few minutes later, a parade of about a dozen women wearing buttons with pumas (the actual felines) marched past holding "Elected, not selected" signs on their way to find Chris Matthews. A woman sitting next to me on a park bench leapt up at their approach. "Oh, it's the Hillary dumbasses," she said. "I'd best get out of here before I get to fighting."

But the dumbasses were already primed for a fight. "We've been told by Pelosi that we're ungracious," said Robin Carlson, a cancer survivor from Los Angeles and a member of the Clinton for McCain contingent whom I interviewed after the made-for-TV demonstration. "We've been told that most of Hillary's supporters have united behind McCain. That is absolute crap." Still, Carlson says that 500,000 people have pledged on her Web site to endorse John McCain sometime during this convention. "Our foremothers marched in the streets so that our voices could be heard. We will not be silenced now."

I asked Carlson why, if she was offended by being called "Sweetie" and invested in the legacy of her foremothers, she would express her disappointment over Obama's nomination by supporting a man who would rob women of their reproductive rights and who does not support equal-pay legislation. "We are really sick and tired of having women's rights held over our heads as a threat," she said. "It's country over party now."

Also leaving the rally were Cynthia Novacek, a 54-year-old from Minnesota, and Mit Mar, a 57-year-old from Sugarland, Texas. "We're all shouted out," said Novacek. Asked what their goal for the week was, Novacek replied, "I want to make it an open convention, where delegates make their voices heard." Barack Obama, she said, "was greased through by the media. They loved him. Everything bad about him, they didn't want to focus on: Bill Ayers, Reverend Wright..."

"You mean Reverend Wrong," Mar interrupted. "Look, I know about the race card. I know about race. I'm African-American. And it was Obama who played the race card, and it's going to come back and bite Obama in the butt." African-American supporters of Obama, in Mar's view, "are proud. Yes, I understand that. But you want someone who can lead America, not because he's African-American, or because she's a certain gender, but because she can lead." But what about the woman they wanted as America's leader? Clinton has been leading her supporters, or trying to lead them, to vote for Obama. "We want Hillary," said Novacek, with the fingers-in-her-ears insistence of an implacable toddler. "She can stand on her head and plead with us, and I still will not vote for him. I want her. She is best for the country."

Putting aside the fact that Clinton is no longer running for president, I asked how they thought she would feel if they successfully disrupted the convention and attracted the news cameras, only to see PUMAs -- and the candidate who is trying desperately to get them in line -- being blamed should Barack Obama lose in November.

"I'll tell you who should get blamed if he loses," said Mar. "Barack Obama. It should go back to Barack Obama." Novacek, meanwhile, thought that perhaps the media who hyped Obama should be ready to get some blame. Neither Novacek nor Mar seemed open to the possibility that maybe it wouldn't work out that way, that neither the media nor the candidate would bear the brunt of the finger-pointing after a loss. They didn't seem to care that they might be dooming their heroine to a legacy she never sought and certainly does not want. Instead, Mar showed me her shirt, which read: "PUMA Clinton Democratic No Deal Obama. DNC a disgrace."