The Democratic Party has saddled itself with a strange and convoluted way of picking a presidential candidate. Ostensibly intended to provide a fair way for its members to sift through the field and reflect the many denominations of the broad church the party represents, it has arrived at a system which is not so much democracy at work as democracy ad absurdum.

In the past the contradictions of the voting arrangements were of little importance because the selection process quickly produced a winner. This year, however, with Senators Obama and Clinton running neck and neck and neither willing to concede prematurely, the system is being tested to destruction. The protracted voting, however, has offered a rare opportunity for Democrats who have not yet voted to express buyer’s remorse on behalf of those who have.

So far the numbers of elected delegates and the totals of votes cast have gone in Senator Obama’s favor, albeit by a slim margin. The rush to embrace the first plausible African-American presidential candidate has proven too strong a tide for Senator Clinton to resist.

But the belated reporting of the Illinois senator’s business dealings with the Chicago real estate tycoon Antoin Rezko, and the screening this week of video showing his spiritual adviser the Reverend Jeremiah Wright expressing venomous views, allows thousands of Democrats time to significantly alter the contest.

Yesterday Senator Obama gave a bravura performance, eloquent and persuasive in many respects. But his failure to distance himself adequately from the Reverend Wright’s caustic utterances, his reluctance to explain how he came 20 years ago to choose a church where such vile words emanate from the pulpit, and his decision to duck why he chose to bring up his children in a church where hate rather than love forms the basis of the Christian faith leave him sorely vulnerable.

It is hard to understand why Mr. Obama did not confront this demon earlier. Instead he has allowed the tortuous Democratic contest to continue, perhaps in the hope that his errors of judgment would not be exposed before he had defeated Mrs. Clinton. However noble his intentions, and however inspiring his words, he tacitly deceived the voters in his own party.

While the press can be blamed for not adequately reporting the senator’s past, or of playing down the explosive nature of what it discovered, the senator alone is responsible for personally profiting from Mr. Rezko’s generosity over a land deal, even while Mr. Rezko was facing a federal investigation. Until last weekend, he failed to admit receiving $250,000 in previously undeclared donations from Mr. Rezko.

Now the voters in Philadelphia on April 22 and beyond will have the chance to appraise Senator Obama anew. So far the Democrats’ imperfect system of democracy has helped him establish a small but significant lead. In caucus states, where there is no secret ballot and the intentions of individual voters have been subsumed into the will of the majority, political correctness, peer pressure, and intimidation, however subtle, have won the day.

It is, perhaps, little surprise that caucus states have backed Senator Obama. It would take a brave soul indeed to argue in a caucus that he is unelectable come November, for fear of being labeled a racist.

In many states with secret primary ballots, the Democratic Party generously enfranchises those who decide on the day to declare themselves as Democrats, never mind that they may have been lifelong Republicans or Independents and that the following day they may revert to their old allegiance.

Exit polls reveal that in some open primary states Mr. Obama has attracted up to 10% of his support from Republicans and many times that figure from Independents. By contrast, Mrs. Clinton has triumphed in the closed primary states, where only longstanding Democrats may vote. This fissure provides a certain bone of contention if, as expected, neither candidate attracts enough elected delegates to win outright.

The Democratic National Committee decision to bring forward the dates of voting in two states with significant numbers of non-whites, South Carolina and Nevada, sparked a stampede by other states who believed that the traditional order of voting disenfranchised their voters. Hence the move by Florida and Michigan to vote early and the DNC’s decision to disallow their primaries, a decision that will also provide fertile ground for heated argument come the Denver convention in August.

Then there are superdelegates. Anxious that the popular will of registered delegates might deliver an extreme or unelectable candidate, the DNC rules provide for about a fifth of delegates to be elected party officials or party dignitaries. This year, barring an unforeseen departure from the contest, the superdelegates will decide who becomes the party’s nominee.

Arguments that superdelegates should merely reflect the will of the elected delegates defy the party constitution. Had the DNC wanted the candidate to be picked solely by elected delegates, they would not have created superdelegates. Yet superdelegates, many of whom represent real voters who have voted in real secret ballot elections, find themselves under pressure to forgo their independent judgment and bow to the will of the majority. Suddenly, in this most fascinating and historic of contests, the race is split wide open. For the voters of Philadelphia, voting in a closed primary with secret ballots, the stakes on April 22 have never been higher.

nwapshott@nysun.com