WASHINGTON -- Hope. Change. Hope and change. Hope 'n' change. Say the words often enough and they begin to take hold, attaching themselves lichen-like to the psyche.

Soon they take on a life of their own and assume human form. He is the one Democrats have been waiting for -- the agent, the beacon, the Everyman who can change the culture of Washington and restore hope to the disenfranchised.

He even comes from Hope. Arkansas, that is.

Or was.

How quickly time passes, how urgently things stay the same.

Not so long ago, Bill Clinton was the man of the moment, the one who was going to put Democrats back in power and baby boomers in charge. His defeat of George H.W. Bush with 43 percent of the vote wasn't just a changing of the guard. It was a baton passing from one generation to the next.

The rest you know: the triangulating, the interning, the squandering. Then came Hillary's turn. And then, apparently, it went.

The primaries finally are over, and Hillary Clinton seems to have missed her date with destiny.

And she missed it in no small part because of that man from Hope. Contrary to the braying of the wounded sisterhood, Clinton's defeat hasn't been the result of misogyny. She was defeated by her husband, by her own party and, definitively last weekend, by the party's Rules and Bylaws Committee.

Because she's a woman? No, because she's a Clinton.

And because the Obama campaign plainly outmaneuvered the Clintons. Despite Hillary having high-powered friends on the committee, including campaign adviser Harold Ickes, as well as a 13-8 edge in committed members going in, a team of lesser-known members "ate their lunch," as one committee member and Obama supporter put it to me. "They (the Clintons) still have the arrogance of privilege and they underestimated us."

"Privilege" is a far cry from the Clintons' own hope-and-change message from the early 1990s. After decades of winning, they had every expectation of yet another easy victory. But something went terribly wrong. Hillary's once greatest asset -- Bill -- became her greatest liability.

The man who once could woo a mannequin suddenly couldn't get his lines right. In some cases, he couldn't even get anyone to listen. Continued...