Let the party elders decide so it won't look like party elders are deciding

That is the position that the Democrats are now taking. The New York Times reports that Al Gore and some other unidentified party elders are trying to figure out what to do if it looks like neither Obama nor Clinton will have the majority of the pledged delegates going into the conventions. They don't want to have the appearance of allowing the superdelegates to decide the nominations. So, this small group of party leaders think that it would be better democratically to cobble together some deal. In this logic, having almost 800 superdelegates, who are either elected politicians, national party poohbahs, plus state Democratic officals, decide the nomination would somehow be much worse than a small group of senior Democrats brokering a deal.

Former Vice President Al Gore and a number of other senior Democrats plan to remain neutral for now in the presidential race in part to keep open the option to broker a peaceful resolution to what they fear could be a bitterly divided convention, party officials and aides said Friday.

Democratic Party officials said that in the past week Mr. Gore and other leading Democrats had held private talks as worry mounted that the close race between Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton could be decided by a group of 795 party insiders known as superdelegates.

The signs that party elders are weighing whether and how to intervene reflects the extraordinary nature of the contest now and the concern among some Democrats that they not risk an internal battle that could harm the party in the general election.

But they also provided an early glimpse at the complex set of tradeoffs facing party leaders, from their desire to make their own influence felt to their worries about offending the candidates and particular constituencies — not to mention the long, sometimes troubled relationship between Mr. Gore and the Clintons.

Of course, when they talk about not letting the superdelegates decide, they really mean, don't let them pick Hillary Clinton if Obama is ahead in the pledged delegates. Do you really think there would be this heartsearching if the situation were reversed and it looked like the superdelegates would give the nominatio to Obama?

And then there is that pesky issue of what to do about Florida and Michigan. As one reader wrote me, it must send Hillary up the wall to hear Nancy Pelosi say things like this:

She said the Florida and Michigan delegates should not be seated if those delegates would decide the nomination.

"Well, I don't think that any states that operated outside the rules of the party can be dispositive of who the nominee is. That is to say they can't make the difference because then we would have no rules," she said.

Pelosi added, "But I do think that the best outcome for us is if one of the candidates pulls ahead and this issue is disposed of long before we get to the convention. We certainly don't want to ignore Florida and Michigan, but we can't ignore the rules which everyone else played by."

Exactly the message from the Obama campaign. And Obama's supporters couldn't have expressed the message about the superdelegates better than Nancy Pelosi's position.

"I think there is a concern when the public speaks and there is a counter-decision made to that," she said, adding quickly, "I don't think that will happen."

She said the governors, lawmakers, DNC members and others picked as super delegates are chosen through a grassroots process and are accountable to the party's voters.

"I do think that they have a respect -- it's not just following the returns, it's also having a respect for what has been said by the people," Pelosi said. "It would be a problem for the party if the verdict would be something different than the public has decided."

There must be no love lost between Pelosi and the Clinton camp after that interview. Officially, Pelosi hasn't endorsed a candidate, but she's sure showing her preferences there. And she's one of the people urging Al Gore to come down from his mountaintop and help broker a deal. Perhaps we can translate "broker a deal" as "arrange for Obama to win."