Anyone wondering what the heck a “superdelegate” is and how this concept was even established? It may surprise you.

A few decades ago, Democratic leaders felt that sometimes, the voters were choosing poor candidates: ones who couldn’t win elections, or didn’t please Democratic power brokers.

Jimmy Carter, for example, was an obscure candidate who developed so much popular appeal that he essentially forced Democratic Party leaders to accept him as the nominee.

The party was not thrilled. So it changed the rules.

They made superdelegates: a “super” class of super Democrats, each voting at the convention for a candidate - in effect, giving each of these Democrats the power of tens of thousands of citizens.

Who are superdelegates? Democratic members of Congress, governors, big shot party members: Bill Clinton, for example. The idea was to steer the party toward solid, competitive candidates.

Should Bubba get a vote - one worth the same as tens of thousands of Democratic voters combined - at the party’s national convention?

Sounds nice in theory, but here’s the issue: there are hundreds of them (463 to be exact, according to a solid source) and that’s a ton when you can seal the nomination with a little more than 2,000.

Entering today, Barack Obama has won more delegates as determined by actual primaries in the four states that have held elections so far (two others, which he lost handily, had their delegates stripped by the DNC).

Yet Hillary Clinton is substantially ahead of him in the overall delegate count because many more superdelegates say they will vote for her.

Some say it doesn’t matter. The rules were the same when they started. If Hillary is better at securing these delegates, is that just too bad for Barack?

Not if you ask us. We’re willing to bet that most of these delegates are anything but super, merely voting for who they think will win, so as to act in their own self interest and ally themselves wih the next president.

If this race is neck-and-neck Super Tuesday and beyond, a nominee could in fact be anointed by party leaders - ones scared of pissing off the Clinton machine - and not by millions of voters asking for change.

Of course, superdelegates can change their minds. If Barack Obama pulls a huge upset today and starts away with the popular vote in primaries, he might just take some of them with him.

If not, this undemocratic process designed to choose electable candidates could backfire and shepherd John McCain into the White House.