For a party that calls itself Democratic, they've certainly devised a presidential nominating process that fails to live up to the name.

After seven months of primaries and caucuses in which Democratic voters and independents leaning their way are producing a clear leader, the nomination may end up decided in back rooms by some 800 party mullahs known as "superdelegates."

It appears Sen. Barack Obama will go to the Democratic convention in August having won the most votes, the most states and the most delegates in the primaries and caucuses.

He is favored by a majority of Democrats over Sen. Hillary Clinton in national polls, and a majority of both Democrats and Republicans think he'd have the better chance of defeating the Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, according to Gallup.

If all of the Democratic convention delegates had been decided by voters in primaries and caucuses, Clinton would have seen by now that she has no hope of overtaking Obama and stepped aside to let him prepare for the general election, as the trailing Republican candidates did for McCain.

But with the glimmer of hope that she can bag enough superdelegates to steal the nomination, she'll continue bashing Obama for four more months, leaving serious general election bruises on whichever Democrat wins the nomination.

Like so many things Democrats do on the national level, this process is potentially self-destructive.

Passions are so strong now that a fifth of supporters of both Democrats say they'll vote for McCain if their candidate loses the Democratic nomination.

This number always drops as emotions cool and the election nears, but McCain is one of the more palatable Republicans to moderate Democrats and independents and there's little question he'll get some crossover spawned by the bitterness of the Democrats' extended nomination fight.

This is something Democrats should be concerned about after seeing how much the relatively paltry number of Democratic defectors Ralph Nader got in 2000 impacted the outcome between George W. Bush and Al Gore.

We engage in philosophical debates about whether superdelegates should bow to the will of the voters or follow their own consciences, but it's more about partisanship and has little to do with principle or conscience.

This is clear from the self-interest obvious in the near-unanimous advocacy of Obama supporters to follow the voters, while Clinton backers talk up voting conscience.

The hypocrisy of the situation is illustrated here in Hawai'i, where Obama won three-fourths of the votes in the Feb. 19 Democratic caucuses and was rewarded with 14 of the 20 delegates up for grabs.

But state Senate President Colleen Hanabusa, a Clinton supporter, expressed hope that the Hawai'i delegation would even up once the nine superdelegates who aren't obligated to follow the caucus vote weigh-in.

Such an outcome would rightly enrage most of the record 37,000 people who turned out for the caucuses if they saw their clear preference nullified by party power brokers.

Look at it this way: Clinton backers in Hawai'i who urge superdelegates to "vote their conscience" on her behalf would scream bloody murder if superdelegates in California similarly ignored voters and swung the state's delegation to Obama after Clinton beat him by a half-million votes in the state's primary.

It's been a close race, but Obama is the clear leader and unless Clinton can significantly narrow the gap before the convention, she simply hasn't earned the nomination.

If Democratic insiders help her steal at the convention what she couldn't win in the voting, they risk long-term damage to the party's credibility among a big chunk of its own faithful.

David Shapiro, a veteran Hawai'i journalist, can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net. His columns are archived at www.volcanicash.net. Read his daily blog at blogs.honoluluadvertiser.com.