This is the DEMOCRATIC party, right?

No, this is not a reference to certain conservative politicians' affinity for the use of the term "Democrat Party" -- i.e. the party that is full of democrats, rather than the party that is for a more democratic system. It's more of an attempt to understand how the Democratic Party could possibly tolerate a convention that is so, well, undemocratic. I'm talking of course about the fact that forty percent of the votes in the upcoming Democratic National Convention will not be delegates allotted to the candidates through a proportion of the votes in caucuses and primaries. Instead, nearly half of the votes in the DNC will be cast by guys and gals who are just too darn important to vote with the masses in their state's primaries and caucuses.

It’s called the Democratic Party, but one aspect of the party’s nominating process is at odds with grass-roots democracy.

Voters don’t choose the 842 unpledged “super-delegates” who comprise nearly 40 percent of the number of delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination.

The category includes Democratic governors and members of Congress, former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, former vice president Al Gore, retired congressional leaders such as Dick Gephardt, and all Democratic National Committee members, some of whom are appointed by party chairman Howard Dean.

This year, this is considerably more important than is usually the case, given that there is no clear front-runner in the Democratic race. It is scary to think of the possibility of a candidate with the most popular vote in the primary season losing to the one with the most delegates (does that bring to mind any bad memories, democrats?).

Look at where we stand right now. Barack Obama has more pledged delegates than Hillary Clinton, yet Sen. Clinton has 87 more super-delegates than Sen. Obama putting her total delegate count 74 higher than his.

So, where does this system come from?

Super-delegates were supposed to supply some Establishment stability to the nominating process.

Before 1972, party elders, such as Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and Charlie Buckley, the boss of The Bronx who helped John Kennedy clinch the 1960 nomination, wielded inordinate power.

But in early 1970’s, the party’s rules were reformed to open the process to grass-roots activists, women, and ethnic minorities.

Sen. George McGovern, the leading anti-Vietnam war liberal, won the 1972 nomination. McGovern turned out to be a disaster as a presidential candidate, winning only one state and the District of Columbia.

So without reverting to the days of party bosses like Buckley, the Democrats decided to guarantee that elected officials would have a bigger voice in the nomination.

Am I to understand that the super-delegates were put in place to protect the party from the people? I can certainly understand that political insiders may have a better, more personal understanding of the candidates and thus, using their super-delegate votes, be able to steer an election away from the kook, but doesn't that just seem to go against the very foundation of the democratic party? It would seem that it is the responsibility of those in the know to disseminate reasons for and against voting for a certain candidate and let us decide whether or not to accept it, not simply conducting the outcome.

This is significant because it works against Obama:

“One was not to get (ideologically) extreme candidates; the other was to avoid the Jimmy Carter phenomenon — where you had a guy who was not very experienced and not very well regarded by most of his fellow governors, but nevertheless managed to win the party’s nomination,” Mayer said.

Many of us know that Obama is experienced* and is well-regarded by many, but the Clinton campaign has done a very good job of painting him as neophyte, which they contrast with Hillary's "35 years" of experience -- 15 of which were at an Arkansas law firm and six on the board at Wal-Mart. In addition, imagine how long it takes to become a super-delegate. I don't imagine that many of these people are young. I don't know of any, in fact, who are under fifty. This is significant considering the voting generation gap we're seeing around the country.

* As if often the case in politics, reality is cloudier than spin. Barack Obama started as a community organizer in 1985, at the age of 23. He's 46 now. That gives him 23 years of so-called "experience," working as an organizer, president of Harvard Law School, civil rights attorney, constitutional law professor, state senator and US Senator.