But let's be clear, in the battle for theory of change, John Edwards' theory is about to emerge triumphant. Obama and Clinton will be Fighting Dems for the duration.

That is why this type of inside baseball analysis of the fates of Mark Penn and Company really misses the boat. Whether Penn gets canned or not is not the point - his triangulation tactics, and I believe the unity tactics of David Axelrod, will now be in the political dustbin. That is what matters here, not whether these overhyped consultants continue to draw paychecks from the Clinton and Obama campaigns.

You've got a couple fundamental errors in your analysis.  
1.  All over the media today is the meme (from analysis of the numbers, they say), that HRC won on the votes of those who said "experience" was their #1 issue determining their vote.  MSNBC is saying she beat ("Trounced") Obama on that issue 71-5.  Accepting those numbers as accurate, one could (and the Penns of this world will, surely) argue that the election wasn't really about "change", but rather was about "experience" and using that experience to guide us forward.  In that context, "change" becomes superfluous to how governance takes place - the winner could continue on the same course as exists now, using their "experience" to manage things better.
The "experience" candidacy facilitates what the Establishment (Dems and others) really want from (Clinton or) anyone in the WH - consolidation of the corporate gains effected through the radicalism of the Bush/Cheney regime.  HRC has alaways, IMHO, been the candidate of corporate consolidationism, and has the Establishment (e.g., superdelegate and machine) support to pull off that candidacy with success.  

2.  HRC and Obama moving their emphasis from being whatever it was they were prior to getting the message from Iowa that they needed to embrace being an agent of "change", to being "change" candidates, is merely a triangulation from Right, toward Progressive/Left.  In morphing into "Change" candidates, they move a bit toward where Edwards has pulled them, until such time as they, and their friends in the media, can assimilate (Blob-like) Edwards' supporters, after which they can go back to tending to the interests of their corporate masters.  Viewed this way, the triangulation skills of Penn et als, become even more vital, because it's the activist Dem base they have to win over.  No dustbin for those skills.

3.  Leopards don't change their spots.  That applies to everyone - Penn, HRC, Obama - and it applies here.

4.  The only way "change" remains relevant in this race is if Edwards stays in.  The minute he drops out, the other two leading candidates will slither back to whence they came.  After all, following the logic of Reid, Pelosi, DiFi et als., where else does the Left have to go, but the Democratic party?

For example, how hard is it for any of these Dem candidates, on their own, without the aid of limosine consultants, to understand that when the next president takes office they have, and the American people are desperate for it, an opportunity to say something like "Our last president won two elections which will go down in history as likely fraudulent, and that president lied and manipulated and lied some more and played off the fears of a nation to get us into a disastrous war of aggression which has solved NONE of the problems it was supposed to.  It was a presidency of secrecy and jailing without charges and vetos for child health care, and veteran's hospitals in disgraceful condition, and on and on.  Congress and the American people made mistakes, as well, during that post 9/11 period of trauma and anxiety, some mistakes that could be perceived as inexcusable in a democracy.  We all made mistakes, my fellow Americans, we are all responsible, and it is time to correct those mistakes."

There was no fundamental realignment. Clinton has always been the candidate of the Permanent Government and thus to the right of Edwards and Obama (though less so with the latter).

Clinton lost the hand-counted votes to Obama. The votes on Diebold machines skewered to her and against ALL other Democratic candidates, a plus 4.6% to her, more than enough to explain her margin of victory. Since Clinton was the most conservative of the three, she should have gotten a higher percentage of absentee votes (generally reflected in hand-counted votes) than on election day. Just the opposite occurred here.