You write:

“If Clinton attempted that, it would be the end of her.”

My hypothesis is that now that Clinton has arranged for a roll-call vote, it will be someone else (with some level of plausible deniability of association with her campaign) who breaks a very ugly story on Obama over the weekend.

The spread is not as wide as people think.

It takes 2,118 delegates to secure the nomination. Obama has 2229.5 — 463 superdelegates, 1766.5 pledged delegates. Clinton has 1896.5 — 257 superdelegates, 1639.5 pledged delegates.

If something bad enough about Obama comes out to sway superdelegates, fewer than half of Obama’s (222, to be exact) would have to switch to Clinton to give her the nomination on the first ballot.

So, imagine that the Sunday morning talking head shows this weekend are dominated by something on Obama on the level of, say, the John Edwards affair/love child scandal. Sure, there would be some nattering to the effect of “I bet Hillary paid the private investigator who took those pictures,” but the bottom line is that she would be riding in on a white horse to save the Democratic Party at the last minute as it was about to commit suicide.

She’d probably still lose the general election to McCain (as Obama likely would have anyway, ugly story or not), but her stock would be blue chip with her party, she could blame the loss on the Obama fallout, and she’d be the obvious 2012 nominee.

How likely is something like this to happen? I had discounted the idea almost 100% until it became obvious that getting a roll call vote was a major goal for her.

Like I said, there’s a REASON she wants one so badly … and the most obvious possible reason is that she has some incredible piece of dirt ready to drop on Obama’s head before that vote takes place. A less obvious possible reason is that congresscritters will get some kind of national security briefing this weekend divulging information about Obama that the rest of us will only hear about later (e.g. he met with Osama bin Laden last month in Afghanistan or some weird shit) … and there are more than 222 Democratic superdelegates who are congresscritters.

Then counter-offer by flipping Rockwell and Paul’s spots. Good enough.

Trent, Hugh, Randall: America’s counting on you.

I don’t know if Rockwell would affirmatively consent, but he might refrain from requesting that his name be removed.

The question is: Would Paul possibly ask to be taken off, given that he would be on the top of the ticket? That might make a difference to him.

We’ll probably develop a short list of candidates that we all agree are acceptable.

Then, we’ll discuss our way to a consensus on which one is the best choice.

If we can’t reach a consensus less formally, then we might reach it by majority vote.

So far, I agree with Trent that Baldwin, Goldwater, and Rockwell are the most likely choices.

The point is moot, Jones has been removed from contention. We expect he would allow his name to go on the record.

As for him not being acceptable. The man is a Republican, in a highly-military populated district, and is on CSPAN RIGHT NOW helping Dennis Kucinich bring forth Impeachment articles.