View this contest through the prism of institutional memory and there are aspects of this race which are comical.  The two innovations of the 1984 reforms--superdelegates and the principle that pledged delegates can change their votes at the convention--were both, depending upon how on spins it, sops or prizes won by the also-rans of losing campaigns.  

Superdelegates were created as a way to solve the "McGovern" problem (what happens if noisy special interests try to foist a nominee on thhe party regulars?).  Not binding pledged delegates was done in the aftermath of Ted Kennedy's bid to wrest the nomination from Carter in 1980 through this tactic (though he never came close to matching Carter in the pledged delegate count).  The Clintons, it's also worth pointing out, were huge McGovernites in '72, and superdelegates, essentially, were originally adopted to reduce the influence of, well, people like them.

And what both changes have done is create a primary season which is at least as divisive than the ones which prompted these changes (and, I'd argue, more so).  If superdelegates didn't exist, and there was a common understanding that the contract which bound pledged delegates was ironclad, this race probably would have ended with the Wisconsin primary, and Clinton supporters wouldn't have gotten ginned up on this idea that she could win it at the convention with some "Hail Mary" play.  

What we're going to find out, I predict, is that the real competitive race, essentially, did end around the time of the Wisconsin primary, because a majority of superdelegates will back the winner of the pledged delegate contest, and there will be no significant defections among pledged delegates (when this is all over suspect the number will be less than ten).