The argument over the potential role of superdelegates in choosing the Democratic Party candidate for president is serious stuff.

It may be that the Democrats will arrive at their national convention in Denver in August with the contest between Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama for the nomination still unresolved. One of them needs to attain 2,025 delegate votes to get the nomination. At this point both still have a way to go to reach that total.

The rest of the primaries could produce enough for one or the other to make the superdelegate question moot. But if that is not the case, the 796 superdelegates, who are not chosen by the voters, could make the final call on the Democratic nominee.

Much is at stake.

First, the presidency of the United States. Given the generally abysmal record the Republicans will likely carry into the national contest in November -- based on public fatigue with the Iraq war and anger and fear over an economy that is coughing up blood -- the Democratic nominee at this point would seem to have a good chance of winning Nov. 4.

That depends, of course, on who it is, and in part on how that person is chosen. That's where the superdelegates come in.

Here is the argument for them. Primary voters and party zealots sometimes make bad choices of candidates. That is, "bad" in the sense that they become enthusiastic -- even movemental -- about candidates who are destined to get whomped in November.

There are modern examples in both parties of candidates who have caught fire only to fizzle out.

Republican conservatives were very excited about the late Sen. Barry Goldwater in 1964. Ms. Clinton, of all people, worked for his election. He was, of course, annihilated in the November elections by Lyndon B. Johnson. Another Republican inspirational misfire was moderate Rep. John B. Anderson in 1980, who ran in the GOP's early primaries, then dropped out to run as an Independent in the fall.

The Democrats had their own political flights of fancy which subsequently crashed to Earth. One was Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy, who destroyed then-President Lyndon Johnson's prospects in 1968. Sen. George McGovern inspired comparable liberal Democratic rhapsody in 1972, only to be obliterated in November by incumbent President Richard M. Nixon.

After another spate of electorally disastrous political effervescence in 1980, when Sen. Edward Kennedy undermined then-President Jimmy Carter's reelection effort by running against him for the nomination, the party came up with the idea of superdelegates. They could also be known as adult leadership for the party. (You wouldn't want too much youthful enthusiasm crashing around.)

From 1982 on there would be enough superdelegates at the conventions (15 percent this year) to be sure that "the right candidate" was chosen. Also, you could be sure that senior party bosses got paid trips to the convention. What would the convention be, after all, if the party bosses weren't there?

The problem is that all those people we see out there responding to the candidates and going to the polls in unprecedented numbers risk getting left out of the game -- after all that money has been spent and all the dreadful months of campaigning -- if the superdelegates end up making the final decision.

It is a bit like a referee determining the outcome of a hard-fought football game with a questionable penalty call.

The question of the role of superdelegates is especially poignant for Pittsburghers. We are, I suppose, used to having our decisions made for us by Democratic Party professional politicians after 70 years of their rule here. But I doubt if any of us, apart from the pols who have benefitted from it, would recommend that approach to the rest of the country in this presidential election year of 2008. Do we really want Gov. Ed Rendell, who takes the position that Pennsylvanians are more racist than sexist, a former Allegheny County jury commissioner, a retired United Steelworkers vice president and a former Pittsburgh mayor inter alia deciding whom Pennsylvania will support for the Democratic nomination?

A question that the Pennsylvania superdelegates -- as well as the delegates chosen in the April 22 primary -- could usefully apply themselves to if the Democratic nomination race has not been settled by convention time is how to carry the support that both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama have accrued into the national election against the Republican candidate.

An obvious solution that must be looked at, even if the two front-runners kick and scream, is the idea that one be the presidential candidate and the other the vice presidential candidate. An obvious Democratic model for that yoking was in 1960, when Sen. John F. Kennedy and Sen. Lyndon Johnson, rivals for the nomination, as unalike as chalk and cheese, were paired to make a winning Democratic ticket. Could Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama find each other more distasteful than Sens. Kennedy and Johnson apparently found each other?

An Obama-Clinton ticket is easier to imagine than a Clinton-Obama one. The Clintons living up on Massachusetts Avenue in the vice-presidential residence in some ways is more palatable than the thought of the Clintons returning to scenes of past connubial non-bliss down on Pennsylvania Avenue. Besides, at 47, it might be hard for Mr. Obama to settle for the No. 2 slot rather than wait and try again in 2012 or 2016, even though his wife says he won't.

All of that is still ahead of us. The issue for now is, will the Democratic Party make the "Democratic" in its name more ascriptive and less descriptive by allowing the superdelegate tail to wag the delegate dog this year? Doing so carries the enormous risk of turning off what seems to be a very enthusiastic electorate, ready to give the Democrats a chance to make things different.

That would seem to me to be a big mistake, to avoid at all costs, one that would upset party trolls.