The Super-delegates are party leaders and lawmakers, including all Democratic members of Congress and former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, as well as ex-vice president Al Gore.

If no candidate has a lock on the 2,025 delegates needed to secure the nomination before the party's convention in August, the 796 "super-delegates" would be decisive.

Unlike "pledged" delegates chosen through primaries and caucuses, super-delegates are free to vote for whomever they chose. Many have already promised to back one candidate or another, "and most of the others will at some point before the convention," said Michael Tanner, a political analyst with the Cato Institute.

List of super delegates that have already endorsed a candidate.

List of super delegates that have NOT yet endorsed a candidate.

Super-delegates were supposed to supply some Establishment stability to the nominating process.

Before 1972, party elders, such as Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and Charlie Buckley, the boss of The Bronx who helped John Kennedy clinch the 1960 nomination, wielded inordinate power.

But in early 1970's, the party's rules were reformed to open the process to grass-roots activists, women, and ethnic minorities.

Sen. George McGovern, the leading anti-Vietnam war liberal, won the 1972 nomination. McGovern turned out to be a disaster as a presidential candidate, winning only one state and the District of Columbia.

So without reverting to the days of party bosses like Buckley, the Democrats decided to guarantee that elected officials would have a bigger voice in the nomination.