Having superdelegates is the only way I know to make sure that a political party has some consistency and continuity from one election to the next.

If you don't know how this could be a problem, consider what happened to the Reform Party.

Ross Perot founded the Reform party in 1995. Its only winning candidate was Jesse Ventura as governor of Minnesota in 1998. Jesse Ventura was a centrist, a conservative on economic issues and a liberal or libertarian on social issues.

When Pat Buchanan decided to run for President in 2000, he quit the Republican Party and joined the Reform Party. His opinions were light-years away from Jesse Ventura's. He was far right across the board. Yet there was nothing anybody could do to stop him from taking over the Reform Party.

According to Minnesota law, a Republican is whoever shows up at a Republican Party caucus; a Democrat is whoever shows up at a Democratic Party caucus; and so on. If someone shows up whose opinions are diametrically opposed to everything your party has ever stood for, you can't kick them out or deny them the right to vote; all you can hope to do is outvote them.

This is not likely to be a problem for Republicans or Democrats, but it was devastating for the Reform Party. People who had never voted for Perot or Ventura, who had never attended a Reform Party caucus before, and possibly didn't know or care what the Reform Party stood for, suddenly showed up at Reform Party caucuses only because they liked Pat Buchanan, and Pat Buchanan had said he wanted to run for the Reform Party's endorsement. There were enough of them to overwhelm the opposition.

Buchanan eventually received only 0.4% of the national popular vote. (Perot had received 19% in 1992 and 9% in 1996.) Buchanan essentially destroyed the Reform Party by taking it over. Both Perot and Ventura quit the party over Buchanan's candidacy. Ventura helped found the new Independence Party and Perot endorsed George Bush.

The only thing I can think of that might have prevented Buchanan from taking over the Reform Party would be if the party had had enough superdelegates—that is, people who had been elected as delegates before the 2000 caucuses.

If you have ever considered supporting a third-party candidate, you ought to consider whether this could happen to your party.