From a story on Democratic superdelegates in this morning’s New York Times:

“It is going to be an enormous train wreck unless by June 3 a candidate has a majority,” said Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, who supports Mrs. Clinton. “I don’t think we want to go back to those wheeling-dealing, smoke-filled back-room days.”

I’ll just add this.  It won’t be worth it for either candidate to overturn the will of the voters through superdelegates.  Obviously, you have to go after them, you have to court them.  But if, say, Barack Obama ends up as he is now with the majority of states, the majority of pledged delegates, and the popular vote, and Hillary Clinton wins the nomination through superdelegates or by finding a way to get the Michigan and Florida delegates seated in her favor, there will be an enormous segment of the Democratic Party who will feel disenfranchised and a good number of them will choose to sit November out.

Likewise, if Clinton turns the ship around and overcomes Obama’s momentum and Obama takes the nomination away from her through superdelegates or backroom politics, many Democrats– who have been cheering his message of turning the page with a new kind of politics for over a year– will decide that their hopeful emperor has no clothes.

Bottom line: Whoever wins the Democratic race will need to do it the right way or they’ll risk being severely weakened in a general election by a disenfranchised and potentially vengeful Democratic base.  Of course, John McCain has his problems on the other side of the aisle, but the overblown lamentations of a few talk radio hosts will be nothing compared to the chaos of a Democratic Party split right down the middle by two large, highly-energized, historically well-funded and well-connected factions.