On Superdelegate Mark Udall's "Recurring Nightmare"

In a Los Angeles Times column today, political scientist Norman Ornstein highlights the serious challenge faced by Democratic superdelegates:

As the front-runner, Obama is playing it cool, although he is still using his spare moments to call superdelegates and chat. If Obama wins Indiana, odds are that a pent-up flood of supers finally will endorse him on May 7, signaling an early end to the process. If he holds Clinton's edge in Indiana to somewhere close to 2% and wins North Carolina by anywhere close to the 15% margin he holds in the polls, odds are that a trickle of superdelegate Obama endorsements will become a steady stream, resulting in a slower May decision.

If neither of these scenarios pan out, the supers will try mightily to resolve the issue on or after the last active voting on June 3, to keep their convention from careening out of control. But they need a good reason to end their torture. Ambiguous results, damaging enough to Obama to keep him from closure but not definitive enough to move these reluctant power brokers to the Clinton camp, are their recurring nightmare. [emphases added]

Superdelegate Mark Udall, the Democrat U.S. Senate candidate from Colorado, has as much or more to lose than any of his fellow undecideds - especially if the Denver convention does careen "out of control."

A "recurring nightmare" is not a good way to get a good night's sleep.