Clinton's supporters vent their frustration

Outside the stately Marriott Wardman Park Hotel were clusters of women with "Hear Me Roar" placards in their fists who came from all over the country -- $4 a gallon be damned -- to make what could be a last stand for their Hillary.

Inside was a ballroom filled with suits who were looking for a "dignified and high-minded resolution" to a problem threatening the Democratic Party, which should be in the driver's seat en route to the White House. Instead, it felt like they were preparing to throw one of the party's rock-star candidates under the bus.

So as far as people like Mary Alyson Pilagin, who drove from Raleigh, N.C., were concerned, the zoo was a fitting metaphor.

"The rules are insane," said Pilagin, 26, an office manager for a restaurant company. It was hot and she had on sunscreen as she marched with her "Count Every Vote" sign past sidewalk cafes where Washingtonians calmly sipped mimosas.

A civil war -- that's how it felt. Democrat against Democrat. Not long ago, they were united in the cause to wrest the White House from the Bush legacy, end the war, stop global warming, empower the middle class.

But now many of them were so angry they said they planned to defect from their party for the first time if Hillary Rodham Clinton did not emerge as the nominee.

"This should never have gotten this far, especially after the mess of Florida," Pilagin said.

A reprise of Nightmare 2000, the Florida ballot debacle, but this time the party sticking it to the Democratic Party was the Democratic Party.

"It's always messed up when it comes to Florida, and we're sick of it," said Johnnie Mae Collins, 60, who had ridden a tour bus for 10 hours with her friends from Jacksonville, Fla., stopping more than usual to be sure nobody got a blood clot.

This was all so stupid, Collins had decided. All the Florida Democrats did was vote. The party made some rule that the votes of Florida and Michigan wouldn't count because the primaries were too early. None of that was the voters' fault (did they set the calendar?), and who winds up getting punished? The voters.

And not just the voters who voted, but also the voters who didn't vote -- the ones who might have turned out had they not been told about a million times that their votes weren't going to count. Who knows how they would have spoken?