It’s tough to reach deep into the recesses of history and remember the February 19 Democratic debate, but a crucial moment transpired after two hours of the standard squabbling and platitudinizing. Viewers were presented with a surprising coda: moderator Chuck Todd asked the six contenders, “Should the person with the most delegates at the end of this primary season be the nominee, even if they are short of a majority?”

Certainly not, said Michael Bloomberg: “Whatever the rules of the Democratic party are, they should be followed.” In an atypical show of consensus, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar all agreed that the party should “let the process work.” Bernie Sanders was the lone dissenter: “I think the will of the people should prevail.”

Sanders’s response elevated the straightforward democratic principle of “whoever gets the most votes wins” above the abstruse protocol of the Democratic party — whereby, if no candidate breaks the 50 percent threshold, the convention moves to a second vote in which 764 elected officials and assorted distinguished Dems, the superdelegates, can break the self-imposed stalemate by adding their votes to those of the 3,979 pledged delegates. Superdelegates can vote for whoever they want, and their votes far outweigh those of ordinary citizens, by a ten-thousand-to-one ratio.