Superdelegate

From Conservapedia

A superdelegate to the Democratic national convention holds office rather without being elected as part of the primary system.

One fifth of the delegates to the Democratic national convention are superdelegates, giving them power to change the outcome in a close race for the presidential nomination.

The Democrats adopted this system of superdelegates to avert another fiasco like that experienced in 1972, when the purely democratic nomination process produced an unelectable candidate for president, George McGovern.