The "superdelegates" are generally officfehbolders, not major contributors. Either way, of course, they're big-time insiders, but the party is able to assure us that they are at least elected officials, not faceless special-interest proxies and lobbyists.

This type of person has historically constituted the voting body at the presidenmtial nominating conventions of both major parties. Each state party has always put together its own delegation according to its own rules, which have always reflected party membership and party loyalty and perhaps a degree of correspondence with the wishes of rank-and-file party members.

The primaries and caucuses were orginally used by only a few states, but the system gradually became nationwide. It is still important to remember that the nominating process is something that each party handles ~ it's not consitutionally assigned to the federal government. State governments set the dates and bankroll the election procedures, and some of them impose greater or lesser restrictions on who the parties must recognize as voters. (That is, in most states one must be a registered member of one of the parties in order to vote in that party's primary, but a few states insist that any registered voter be allowed to vote in any primary, or that voters reginstered in neither party be allowed to vote in the primary of their choice.)

We can hate the parties all we want, or at least hate what they seem to have become, but their historical role in the nominating process cannot be denied, and if it is ever to be replaced by something else, that will be achieved only with great difficulty, by innovators with tremendous energy and imagination.