I don't believe they'd act that way en masse if that situation was actually put to them.
Thanks NYT, you interviewed 93/771 but I'd really appreciate a breakdown on who they are and if they've already endorsed. At least one comment is from a superdelegate who is pledged to Biden, another it really sounds like he's for Buttigieg though the article does not explicitly states as such, no kidding he's going to be talking against Sanders at this stage
I think there's some semantic games going on here. I think some of them are pushing back against the idea of just coronating a plurality Sanders so they can - as Chris mentioned - extract concessions from him at the convention before ultimately voting for him. Maybe assurances on the VP slot since it's basically the only thing of value in play there.
We're still talking about 93 out of 771 here. That's 12% (Less actually because not all 93 of them are even playing with this). Not insignificant but please. One word from Obama or Pelosi saying "y'all are nuts respect the will of the voters" and this dies immediately. I don't think for a second Obama doesn't see the trainwreck that would be coming if there was some actual effort to swing it on a second ballot
The actual scenario to "worry" about is one where Sanders has a narrow plurality. Silver posed an extreme thought experiment where one candidate had a single less delegate than the plurality candidate but had won the last 14 contests in a row and general election polling showed the technical plurality leader getting blown out by 20 points. Obviously an unrealistically extreme case but as long as Sanders avoids treading towards that territory I don't think there's much to worry about. But the theoretical existence of such a scenario means that lots of superdelegates will hedge and play the semantic/leverage game.
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xp1337: Don't you wish there was a spell-checker that told you when you a word out?