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The danger to Democrats is not that the race for their presidential nomination will go on too long. The voters seem to love it. Turnout for the Democratic caucuses and primaries is breaking records in state after state. The danger is that the losing candidate will assert that the process was unfair—that he or she was cheated.

Some supporters of Barack Obama have urged Hillary Rodham Clinton to quit because it would be difficult for her to overtake Obama’s lead in pledged delegates. Clinton’s response? Unfair! They’re trying to bully me out of the race.

The Obama campaign sees a different conspiracy: that the superdelegates will try to reverse the will of the people. Could the superdelegates make Clinton the nominee even though Obama is winning the popular vote? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s answer is yes: “These superdelegates have a right to vote their conscience and [for] who they think will be the better president, or who can win,” Pelosi said on ABC News’s Good Morning America. But also, no: “I think it will be harmful to the Democratic Party if the superdelegates were perceived to overturn the will of the people.”

So which is it? Well, both.

Clinton supporters ask: Why do we have superdelegates if they are expected to do nothing but ratify the primary results? “The concept of the superdelegates is that they will use their best judgment about who they believe best represents the party and the country,” said Kiki McLean, a senior adviser to the Clinton campaign. But the Obama campaign counters: If the superdelegates can do anything they want, then why even bother to hold primaries?

Superdelegates were created in 1982 to give professional politicians a bigger role in the nominating process. In the past, the function of superdelegates has been not to decide the nomination but to provide closure. Democratic political consultant Tad Devine explained, “If one candidate had begun to move out, even if the other candidate had done well early on, superdelegates could move toward that candidate and put the candidate over the top.”

The superdelegates did put Walter Mondale over the top in 1984, and they ratified the popular choices of Michael Dukakis in 1988 and Bill Clinton in 1992. However, Devine noted, “for them to choose a candidate who came in second would be unprecedented.”

In 1980, when Jimmy Carter beat Edward Kennedy for the Democratic nomination, the party had a “robot rule” that required all delegates to vote on the first ballot the way the primary voters had instructed them. After Carter lost to Republican Ronald Reagan, that rule was replaced by one that Devine calls “a standard of conscience—that the delegates shall in good conscience fairly reflect what voters say in primaries and caucuses.”

The superdelegates have the power to reverse the will of the voters but are generally expected to exercise it only for a compelling moral reason—like new and damaging information about the prospective nominee, or evidence that the leading candidate can’t win the general election. The burden of proof is on the Clinton campaign to provide that evidence.

Then there are the disputed Florida and Michigan delegates. The Clinton campaign insists that it would be unfair to exclude them and points out that Florida had a level playing field: Everybody’s name was on the ballot, and nobody campaigned there. The Obama campaign insists that it would be unfair to seat the Florida and Michigan delegates elected in January. “We didn’t campaign there,” Obama said, so Clinton had the advantage of higher name recognition. Obama added, “My name wasn’t even on the ballot in Michigan.” The national party is trying to work out a compromise whereby delegates from Florida and Michigan would be seated but their votes would not determine who wins.

The last time the losing candidate claimed to have been defeated unfairly was in 1968, when the Democrats nominated Hubert Humphrey, who had not even competed in the primaries. Eugene McCarthy’s supporters took to the streets of Chicago, and Republican Richard Nixon won the election.

Of course, the differences between Democrats over the Vietnam War back in 1968 were much greater than their differences over the war in Iraq. On the other hand, this time a lot of Democrats are emotionally invested in the election of either the first female or first African-American president.