DENVER--Remember the Hillary holdouts--the 48 percent of former Clinton supporters who tell pollsters they're either undecided or backing John McCain? (I'm assuming that this evening's "Love Train" roll-call vote didn't erase every trace of Clinton-Obama drama from your memory.) Well, at least one Obama supporter doesn't believe they ever really existed. Her name? Kansas Governor--and vice-presidential shortlister--Kathleen Sebelius.

Asked this afternoon during a lunch with NEWSWEEK's convention team whether the Hillary holdouts spell trouble for Obama in November, Sebelius said the entire conversation was "oddly anti-feminist." "The notion that women who are passionate supporters of Hillary Clinton's would honor her by voting for John McCain seems to me to be totally insane," she said. "It keeps being raised as real, but I haven't ever found anybody that can confirm that. I'm absolutely convinced tht 99.9 percent of the people who supported Hillary Clinton will support Barack Obama. All the things she fought for will only be achieved if Barack is president."

When we pressed her on the issue--noting that numerous surveys show a sizable number of defectors--Sebelius questioned whether people were lying to pollsters.  "How do people even identify who are Hillary Clinton supporters in those polls?" she asked. "And are they Democratic Hillary supporters? I'm not at all convinced that some of this isn't ongoing mischief being played by the other team. There was certainly that crossover vote in some of those later primaries that kept showing up. The Limbaugh Effect, right? Are those the folks now being polled who say, "I was a Hillary Clinton supporter, now I support John McCain?"  At this, NEWSWEEK columnist Jonathan Alter mentioned that he'd spoken to some delegates--Democrats--who said they wouldn't vote for Obama. Sebelius was incredulous. "They're seriously going to support John McCain?" she asked. No, Alter said. They're just not going to vote. At this, the governor snapped. "Well, that's a very effective strategy," she said.

It's clear that Sebelius is a true believer. Despite a pair of personal calls from Clinton--the first in early 2007, the second a year later--Sebelius caused something of a stir in January when she became one a small group of Democratic women governors to endorse the upstart Illinois senator. It was a decision she had made much earlier. "Hillary was not the kind of candidate who was going to galvanize independent and Republican support in Kansas, which is what you have to do to win," she said. "The last time Kansans voted for a Democratic presidential candidate was FDR in 1936. They didn't like him after that, apparently. Even Bill never won Kansas." Of course, Sebelius thinks Obama can break the curse. Helping him, she says, will be an armada of "magnificent" women surrogates headed by his wife Michelle. "It was tricky in the primary to use a lot of women and not appear to be women against Hillary," she said. "But now we'll be out there against John McCain." For Obama, that's a good thing--just in case those Hillary holdouts do, you know, exist.