Hillary Stillary?

Does anyone remember Hillary Clinton? She used to be the meanest, toughest, most ruthless politician around. Apparently, the are plenty of women who haven't forgotten her.

To be fair, it's not just women. There are plenty of Clinton supporters of every demographic description who are still ticked. But yes, it's true that the Clinton base skewed female, and that women over 30 are the most vocal of the malcontents. Some of them are calling themselves "PUMAs" (as in "Party Unity My Ass"), an acronym that makes them sound, appropriately enough, like cougars in a very bad mood. Who are these women, and why are they such buzzkills?

PUMAs. It sound pretty emotional.

Now the Democratic Party is moving forward, as it must, but it is doing so without giving the Clinton women a real hearing -- without letting them vent their anger. It is the social equivalent of talking over them, waving off their complaints, assuming they'll come around. This is a mistake. This is only making things worse (even if, as Walter Shapiro notes, history says they will come around, no matter how many PUMA T-shirts and Web sites like this one may be sprouting now).

There are several reasons we're told that women aren't letting go of their anger, but one of the most intriguing is the idea that some other woman might get the VP nod.

But this is one of the facets of post-Clinton anger that puts Obama in a hell of a bind. Because the truth is that many of Clinton's most devoted supporters overcame their own ambivalence about her because they believed it was so important to establish a precedent, to break the glass ceiling and put a woman in a job that has never been filled by a woman before.

While the 'progressive' world and the mainstream media have Barack already selected as the winner of this race, Obama, it seems, has a great deal on his plate.