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Superdelegates were meant to give less power to "insurgents", more to party's insiders.
From an article from How Stuff Works.
Superdelegate Pros and Cons
Superdelegates are simply "unpledged voters." Their vote represents their own choice, rather than the wishes of the voters, and these unpledged delegates can pledge their votes as they see fit.
Superdelegates have to consider how to use their votes carefully. They may:
Vote in step with how the voters in the majority of states voted
Vote in line with Democratic voters nationwide
Vote in favor of the candidate with the most pledged delegates, even if it is just a slim majority.
....What's the point of having superdelegates in the first place? Explains Willie Brown, former mayor of San Francisco, "You have superdelegates because … You don't want bleed-over from the Green Party, the independents and others in deciding who your nominee will be" (source: CNN). Brown cites the ability of undeclared or non-Democrat voters in some states to cast a vote in Democratic primaries or caucuses. The logic follows that if enough of these nonaffiliated voters cast ballots, voters outside the Democratic Party could decide the nominee.
Adding superdelegates to the convention provides a countermeasure against such an event. Since superdelegates are all registered Democrats (and usually elected officials), it's reasonable to assume they wouldn't vote contrary to Democratic Party lines. But to some, the power superdelegates have to sway a nomination flies in the face of a democratic process. "If the superdelegates go against the popular will of the voters, whoever emerges as 'victor' will enter the presidential election shorn of democratic legitimacy and devoid of electoral credibility" warned columnist Gary Younge during the 2008 race" (source: Guardian).
More details on how and why the Superdelegates began. It is from a review of
Reinventing Democrats:The Politics of Liberalism from Reagan to Clinton
It was part of the power grab of the Democratic Party by the Democratic Leadership Council.
Game Plan
If you imagine the DLC as a team, then the captain would have to be Al From. A veteran of the Carter administration, From took over the House Democratic Caucus after the 1980 elections with visions of rejuvenating his ailing party. He had some natural allies. As Baer points out, there were at least three strains of Democratic pols who felt the party needed redirection---Southern Democrats like Sen. Sam Nunn and Sen. Lawton Chiles, neoconservatives like Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and neoliberals like Rep. Tim Wirth and Sen. Gary Hart. Although they came to their views from different angles, they wound up agreeing on many of the same positions: They believed that the Democratic Party should be tougher on crime and foreign policy, less spendthrift with entitlements, and less indulgent of entrenched special interests like civil servants and unions. They also thought that moving the party in this direction would "restore its electoral viability" with the middle class that had deserted it for Ronald Reagan.
How did a group of elite politicians and operatives transform a political party?
First, they gave themselves a little bit of distance. After several unsuccessful attempts to influence the party establishment from within, the reformers formed the DLC as an extra-party organization in 1985. This avoided what Bruce Babbitt referred to as the "Noah's Ark problem"---the need to satisfy diverse constituents by taking representative positions on behalf of each one. They could also raise their own money (which DLC honchos like Virginia's Chuck Robb were notably good at), start their own think tank (the Progressive Policy Institute), and publicize their own views without tangling with the cumbersome Party bureaucracy.
Second, they worked the rules. They pressured the party to create a new class of "super delegates" consisting of state party leaders and elected officials who, they hoped, would balance out the interest groups that had come to dominate Democratic conventions. They also lobbied to cluster Southern and Western state primaries on "Super Tuesday," so that candidates who were strong in that part of the country (especially conservative Southern Democrats) would get an early boost that could offset a poor showing in more liberal Iowa or New Hampshire.
More on superdelegates from Jeff Stein at Vox.
What are “superdelegates,” and what do they mean for the Democratic nomination?
What is a superdelegate, anyway?
As Elaine Kamarck writes in her book Primary Politics, the creation of superdelegates was a reaction to the messy 1980 Democratic convention, in which Ted Kennedy and his supporters challenged sitting President Jimmy Carter. Many Democrats felt that the democratization of the primary process had led to chaos, and resulted in many nominees that ended up losing. Therefore, they wanted to give party elites more of a say."We must also give our convention more flexibility to respond to changing circumstances, and, in cases where the voters' mandate is less than clear, to make a reasoned choice," Jim Hunt, who headed the commission that considered reforming the party's rules, said at the time, according to Kamarck's book. "We would then return a measure of decision-making power and discretion to the organized party."
Perhaps, as Hunt's quote suggests, the Democratic officials themselves believed this was a responsible way to ensure that the party nominated the right candidate. But it's much harder to believe that that they didn't foresee the undemocratic implications of bolstering the "decision-making power" of party leaders.[/blockquote
And one more paragraph from Vox:Why the superdelegate system is still really undemocratic (and should be abolished)
Regardless of what happens in this election, the fact that a party establishment even could overturn the voters strikes many as transparently unfair.
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Jimmy Carter, Mike Dukakis, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Freudian slip there? 
We are so bad.
