Superdelegates are here to stay

Remember all the uproar during the 2008 Democratic primaries over enormous sway that superdelgates would hold over the party's nominating convention? Democrats--at least those backing evenual nominee Barack Obama--fretted that superdelegates, who are free to ignore primary outcomes and vote for their own preferred presidential nominees, would break for Hillary Clinton during the party's Denver convention. You know the rest of that story--but the question of superdelegates has remained a heated (if wonky) source of controversy among Democratic party leaders ever since.

Now, however, party leaders have elected to stay the course, so far as the superdelegate question goes. Newsweek reports that superdelegates are here to stay after the Democratic National Committee's Rules Committee threw out a proposal to abolish them.