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Precisely. They all feed from the same trough. None of the pigs at the trough can allow a single pig to knock the trough over. If it is knocked over, the pigs have to scrounge in the dirt by themselves. So it is in their collective best interest to make sure no single pig can be that disruptive. Accordingly they have to force by any means any pig who would endanger their slop to fall in line or go away.

With the exception of a few retired politicians, most of the Super Delegates are office holders. Any who strays from the party line risks their political lives. Candidates for office need money and support from the party. If they stray, the party could take any number of punitive actions. For starters, they can make it difficult to raise money or generate momentum by refusing to appear at fundraisers and campaign events. They could even run and endorse a challenger. They can withhold back office support. They can run a dirty whisper campaign about you. In Congress they can bar committee assignments, and strip your district of pork. There are myriad things the party can do to punish a stray politician. They cannot see past the election to think on how destructive this process is for the party and the country, nor how in this case it had been manipulated to maximize the power of the Clinton machine. And there is always another election coming. Every 2 years.

I presume they all knew to some degree that the arrangements between State Dept, Teneo, and the Foundation was structured for corruption to give the appearance of arms-length and plausible deniability. I presume many in the GOP were aware of it too. Yet they chose to go with it, regardless of the damage it was doing to the country. Why? Because the alternative would have led to breakdown and schism within the party, the party finances, and in the way Washington operates in general - at a minimum.