After having spent way too many hours watching and reading about the primaries from various sources, I have come to the conclusion that the Republicans have the system right (or at least much better than ours).
Our system is essentially a gambit that relies on a runaway winner relatively early in the process in order for it to work well, and since we implemented this system we have always had that winner. The problem with our system (which is entirely proportional in the way delegates are awarded) is that in a close 2-person race (something which we will never see) a tie is the likely outcome, thus forcing the super-delegates into directly choosing our candidate or leaving us with a brokered convention.
The Republicans have avoided this mess much better than we have through two practices: allowing states to be winner take all, and by giving the statewide winner bonus delegates. These two factors are what enabled McCain to wrap up the nomination and prevent what would have been a guaranteed brokered convention had they been using our system (let's just thank God that Edwards dropped out or the mess could be much bigger on our side).
Just looking at the numbers, there is absolutely no way that this will end before March 5th and the likelihood of this going all the way to the convention is getting to be an almost certainty regardless of what Chairman Dean says (thanks to our proportional awarding of delegates).