Bernie Sanders doesn’t want to stop the wheel, he wants to break the wheel:

That’s why the superdelegates will steal it if they have to

The flickering light Bernie Sanders supporters are following down the Democratic primary tunnel leads to him triumphantly passing or tying Hillary Clinton in pledged delegates in California, followed by hundreds of superdelegates flocking to his side.

Unfortunately, that “underdog triumphs” script requires superdelegates to put what’s best for the party — both in the fall and in the future–over their own personal job security. The price of defecting for the supers this time could go well beyond ending up on Hillary and Bill Clinton’s infamous “enemies list.”

There is no doubt that Bernie Sanders would have a compelling case to make if he wrested the pledged delegate lead away from Hillary Clinton after all the pundits, the party and her own campaign said it was impossible. To do so would demonstrate passionate support for his White House bid and expose just how vulnerable a candidate Clinton would be in the fall.

But that probably won’t be enough.

That’s because, unlike Barack Obama’s run in 2008, Sanders’ people-powered insurgency represents a frightening paradigm shift for politicians and party insiders, whose world it would tilt on its axis. Yes, Obama promised change, but he wasn’t bent on revolution.

Think about it: a little more than 35 percent of the 717 superdelegates are governors, senators or representatives, which means they face re-election. Yet only a small subset are currently pledged in line with the will of their states’ voters. There are good reasons to think they will stay put, even if they come under constituent pressure. After all, most of them ‘got where they got’ by paying lip service to voters’ concerns while kissing the asses of corporations and big donors.

Sanders’ has shown that it’s possible to strip away the influence of big donors and still win elections, which Democrats always say they want. But actually doing so would erode the power of incumbency, lowering barriers to entry for scores of other principled candidates who would gladly run against them if that didn’t mean mucking about in the filth of fundraising.

Beyond sitting lawmakers guarding their flanks, there are the lobbyists to think about. Around a tenth of Democrats’ superdelegates are registered lobbyists, and they would prefer to maintain their leverage over Congress, thank you very much. Many lobbyist superdelegates are of the “revolving door” variety: politicians who took their experience and influence on Capitol Hill and shopped it on K Street to the highest bidder.

There may be no sadder example of this craven influence peddling than Howard Dean, whose own inspirational 2004 primary run paved the way for Sanders’ small-donor internet fundraising juggernaut. Dean was also head of the Democratic National Committee, and he pushed a 50-state strategy that was credited with helping Democrats take the House back in 2006 and Obama’s victory in 2008.

But Dean has since cashed out. Now he is a health care lobbyist, who, surprise surprise, opposes Sanders’ plan to eliminate the profit motive from medicine with Medicare-for-all. Though he’s a superdelegate from Vermont, where 86 percent of primary voters turned out for their senior senator, he has doggedly pledged to support Hillary Clinton, who was unviable in that state, earning not a single pledged delegate.

Finally, many of the remaining superdelegates are big DNC donors, who earned their perches by playing the game by the rules in place now.

If neither Sanders nor Clinton can clinch in pledged delegates, the hard-boiled bet has got to be on her. The rationale for that end game is already being floated. In FiveThirtyEight on Saturday, we learned that Sanders’ pledged superdelegates are actually worth less than Clinton’s because they come from unimportant caucus states.

“Sanders’s reliance on extremely low-turnout caucus states has meant the pledged delegate count overstates his share of votes,” David Wasserman opines in “Bernie Sanders Is Even Less Competitive Than He Appears.”

Never mind that Sanders is crushing it with independent voters, the most important voters in a general election. Independents are also a huge repository of his #BernieorBust contingent, at least some fraction of whom has said they will vote Trump over Clinton, doubling the impact of their loss.

Superdelegates were created to put a thumb on the scale to keep a weak candidate from taking the nomination and losing in the fall. But in Sanders case, these party insiders will be tempted to do just the opposite: thwart their strongest candidate because of what he promises to do: unfeather their nests, muck out their stalls and let the sun shine in.