Bernie Sanders stands on the edge of seizing the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Facing him down, and loaded for bear, is the Party’s leaders–officers, elected officials, donors, and even former nominees and opponents. These forces now take the form of Joe Biden, upon whom they have finally foisted their mantle. Super Tuesday is the battleground, not just for the nomination, but the future of the party itself.

More than a third of the pledged delegates are at stake, with contests in fourteen states, including California and Texas. Sanders also could win Massachusetts, the home state for Elizabeth Warren, a remaining, wobbling, rival. Biden’s best hope is the southern bloc, including not just Texas, but Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Virginia. If Biden manages to sweep the cultural South, the nomination is truly in doubt.

While a nomination is on the line, the Democratic elites are thinking of control of the U.S. House and U.S. Senate in November. They are thinking of wearing the “socialist” label for the next twenty years. Democrats are worried for the future. This is why Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar dropped out and endorsed Joe Biden. This is why figures like James Carville, who managed Bill Clinton’s campaigns in 1992 and 1996, started taking shots at Sanders a couple of weeks ago.

Democratic elites will cast this as an intellectual exercise, an act of repudiating the revolution Sanders is attempting to inspire. Bernie’s supporters will portray it as a naked exercise in power, where the party’s elites, fearful of their own irrelevance, are moving to quash the people’s choice. There is probably truth in both accounts.

The party that prides itself on expanding the franchise, and in empowering the marginalized, is about to confront its own principles. Democracy, purely understood, would yield to the wishes of the majority even if they happen to be Bernie supporters. The process should be about maximizing input and championing the results as the “will of the people.” This is why, we are always told, the Electoral College must go, or the super-majority of the Senate’s filibuster should be abolished. Many progressives argue even the Senate itself should be revamped because it is not purely representative of public opinion.

Instead, the elites have decided to blunt Bernie’s surge. The leaders have determined they are not so comfortable when the people move toward a choice that threatens the structures they have spent lifetimes erecting. There are limits, it seems, to the wisdom of crowds. It is funny, really. In their panic, the progressives are behaving like our founders, who understood the limits of the public’s unvarnished opinion.