You heard it here first: President John Edwards.

Oh, yeah. It can totally happen. I'm not even joking. Let all the bean-counting madmen at MSNBC wet themselves over the death struggle for Guam's 4 pledged delegates, while Huffington Post's grammar-stunted lovers of "hope" spill caramel macchiato on their keyboards and shake angry Obamite fists at Ms. Clinton. In the meantime, I'll lay some truth on you: also-ran John Edwards has just as good a chance as Bam or Hill of being the Dems' man in November, and judging by current events, that's probably what he's gunning for. How can I say such a thing? Find out after the jump.

Tuesday, the media stereoopticon tells us, is truth time for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. A convincing victory for either one in North Carolina would make a compelling case to the Dems' wishy-washy superdelegates that they have a consensus candidate.

The polls show Obama losing ground in a state where he once led comfortably by twenty points. He could seal this thing up with a double-digit win, but Clinton and the great majority of working-class whites living outside the Triangle have made that increasingly unlikely. For her part, Clinton could spin any victory as a Comeback Royale, an upset to rival Kansas' OT, come-from-behind win over Memphis in the Final Four, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

Both candidates need a shove over the North Carolina finish line. A shove that the state's golden-boy ex-senator, presumably, could provide. Except he hasn't. And he probably won't, not now.

Does John Edwards want influence? He's got it. The media are so sufficiently enraptured - and his constitutents are so sufficiently conflicted - that he could have easily played kingmaker with an endorsement of one or the other candidate... but it's too late now, too close to election day, for an Edwards announcement to make a full impact. Why would he miss such a glowing opportunity to maximize his party clout?

Because there's a better opportunity lying ahead. Absent another implosion by one of the candidates before Tuesday, we will have exactly what we had after Super Tuesday, and Ohio and Texas, and Pennsylvania: a hog-tie. Obama will win a meek victory in North Carolina - enough for him to claim he's the nominee, but not enough to shake off concerns that he's weak in the middle, where it could hurt him worse than Clinton in November.

Then Hill will clear the clutter off of the table - the West Virginias, the Puerto Ricos - and, come June, we'll be right where we are now. Both camps will claim they're more electable; both will lay claim to the delegate and popular-vote totals, even though those figures are so suspect they might as well be Olympic figure-skating scores.

At that point, the remaining superdelegates will do what Democratic Party insiders always do in these cases: poop themselves, cower in a corner, and wait for events to take care of themselves.

That will happen at the August party convention in Denver, where Obama and Clinton will go in as weak as ever. Neither will have the requisite 2,025 delegates, but they'll share one thing: approval ratings so low, they'd look like ants on the ground to Dennis Kucinich.

So there will be a convention ballot. And a deadlock. And then, something magical - and a little bit stupid - will happen: all bets will be off. Under arcane party rules, the delegates will be under no obligation to honor the wishes of party voters. Any candidate is up for consideration, and any vote is permissible. Hill and Bam will likely go to the bottom of the list.

Impossible, you say? The voters won't stand for it? Bullfeathers. The dueling duo's negatives are off the charts. Poll after poll has shown that, whether Obama or Clinton gets the nod, a huge swath of Democratic America will feel cheated - so cheated that we might spend the next 20 years marveling at a phenomenon called "McCain Democrats." If you're a superdelegate, and you know somebody in your party's gonna get screwed, you might as well throw out all pretenses to honoring "the will of the people" and look for the most electable guy in the room come November.

That guy, without question, will be Edwards. He acquitted himself admirably in the primaries. He has more slick oratorical lacquer then Obama (circa May 2008) and more middle-America cred than Clinton (circa whenever). Most importantly, he'll have stayed above the fray: a known quantity who kept it classy and didn't pick a bickering side while his counterparts tussled in the gutter, bruised each other, fatigued the public, and bankrupted their donors. Edwards is fresh but familiar, attractive to white and black, male and female, college-educated and non, latte and black coffee alike.

You think this scenario hasn't crossed his mind? Then explain Elizabeth Edwards' finger-wag job on the media - and by extension, the people - for their electoral fickleness last week. And the pair's subtle knack for peppering Obama and Clinton with underhanded compliments ever since the real primary blooding started. The Edwardses have done just enough to stay engaged and credible without stepping in it.

And come August, their aloofness may be just the accent Howard Dean needs to throw over the deck chairs on this sinking ship disguised as a major political party.

Then, there will only be one more tough question: Who does Edwards pick for a veep?

(Suggestions are welcome!)