Late last month, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) voted nearly unanimously to restrict the ability of so-called “superdelegates” to influence the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination process. The product of two years of work by the Unity Reform Commission (URC), the new rules stipulate that superdelegates — unpledged DNC members and other party elites — will no longer be allowed to vote on the first convention ballot unless the nominee has already secured a majority of pledged delegates.

Whether the new rules will significantly affect the 2020 nomination process is unclear. If there are multiple rounds of convention balloting — something that hasn’t happened since 1952 — superdelegates will still have the right to weigh in. But what it guarantees is that activists’ worst nightmare — a tight nomination contest being decided by unelected party elites — will not happen. The new rule eliminates any chance that superdelegates could effectively select the Democratic nominee.

So with the dust now settled, what are we to make of this change? Why did the vast majority of the party establishment willingly reduce its own power? And what does it tell us about the ongoing struggle of Sanders and his internal allies to transform the Democratic Party?