Bus Full of PUMAs

By CaraBayles on Wed, Aug 27, 2008 2:03 pm

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Yesterday, I was buying a drink at the gas station, when a woman asked the clerk for directions. I told her I could direct her, since I was headed that way.

"Where's your car?" she asked.

"I'm walking."

"Well, I think there's room in my van." And I'm sorry, mom and dad, but I climbed right into this sketchy white van filled with middle-aged women, and soon learned they were all members of PUMA.

PUMA, aka Party Unity My Ass, is a group of angry Clinton supporters who are livid with the Democratic Party. The women in the van were from Oregon, Montana and Pennsylvania. An internet phenomenon and a national movement, one angry PUMA said, "All these movements are on the web, and the media has slept through the whole thing. There's just waking up now, at the convention, at the last minute."

PUMAs in their natural habitat"We just wanna make sure there's an open roll call," another said, though at this point, they were all talking at once. "We're here to support Hillary, and give people a clue that there's 18 million of us that aren't ready to line up behind Barack Obama."

"They've been pressuring delegates to line up behind Barack Obama. Hilary delegates," another declared. "And in some states that's illegal," she said, referring to Oregon, where pledged delegates are bound by law, and some believe that the Democratic Party would have been guilty of entrapment if Clinton's name hadn't gone on the ballot.

Mary Hatheway, of Pennsylvania, said she'd worked on every Democratic presidential campaign since McGovern, but that she would be voting for McCain this November.

The bus wouldn't concede to reports that Clinton will release her delegates tonight before the voting begins. "There's a lot of rumors going around," one PUMA said.