jessica stites is executive editor of in these times and editor of the site's june cover story. ill with us, rick perlstein, author of several books, including "nixonland." let's start with you, jessica. explain the superdelegates, which has really become such a critical issue right now. how they came into being. amy: our reporter actually went down to the national archives and that the transcripts of this entire commission that debated for months about democratic party rules reform and came up with the superdelegates as their answer. basically, what have prompted carterre the losses of and mcgovern and so the fear the democratic party wasn't nominating the electable, winnable candidates. and so party insiders said down and said, what do we do? their instinct was, we need to take control. we need to take control of the nominating process. we are worried if we let the people decide through primaries, they're going to pick the wrong person. and so they instituted the superdelegate who could act as a corrective, essentially, to the at the vote by -- convention casting votes for whom