Patrick Healy and Julie Bosman lay out Hillary Clinton's last ditch, five pronged, "kitchen sink" strategy against Obama. The key graf in the piece is a quote from Democratic strategist Steve McMahon:

"There's a general rule in politics: A legitimate distinction which could be effective when drawn early in the campaign often backfires and could seem desperate when it happens in the final hours of a campaign," said Steve McMahon, a Democratic strategist working for neither candidate.

McMahon is spot on - and it's yet more evidence that the Clinton campaign's biggest sin this cycle was buying into their own hype of inevitability early on and underestimating Barack Obama. They didn't attack him when they should have because they felt they didn't need to. Big mistake.

Clinton's critique of Obama's foreign policy naivete is based on two things he said last summer. On July 24 in a CNN/YouTube debate, Obama said he would meet with America's enemies without preconditions. A week later (August 1), perhaps in an effort to shore up his tough side in response to the criticism he'd been taking from his first comment, Obama said he would launch a unilateral strike on terror targets inside Pakistan, a US ally.

During that week-long stretch Obama raised huge concerns about his readiness to be Commander in Chief among members of the Democratic establishment, and while he did take heat from Clinton, Dodd, and Biden over his remarks, after a few days they let the matter drop.

That was the moment when Clinton could have, and should have, pounded Obama relentlessly as being weak and inexperienced on foreign policy. It might not have been pretty, and it might have engendered a bit of a backlash at the time, but she could have at least tried to define Obama in a way that would hurt him over time, and raise the kind of doubts that might have prevented, or at least slowed, the migration of Democratic primary voters his way.

But that boot-on-the-throat moment is long gone, and instead of returning to a recurring theme about her opponent Clinton looks like she's raising it in a desperate final pitch to save her hide.

It's all very reminiscent of a scene we're used to seeing in sports. The first rule for every heavy favorite playing against an upstart underdog is to attack early and crush the other team's spirit as quickly as you can. Because the longer you let an underdog stay in the game, the more they sense the impossible is possible. That hope leads to confidence, and confidence leads to better execution, and the next thing you know we have Appalachian State upsetting Michigan, Buster Douglas beating Mike Tyson, and the USA Olympic Hockey Team's "Miracle on Ice."

But for every dramatic upset, there are hundreds of underdogs whose dreams get snuffed out on a regular basis because the other team properly executes its game plan.

This is all hindsight, of course. There may not have been anything Clinton could have done to derail Obama. Circumstances may have conspired to make him an unstoppable force of nature this year. On the other hand, it's hard to say that someone who entered this race with as many institutional advantages as Hillary Clinton hasn't missed key opportunities along the way to leave her where she is now, standing on the brink of elimination. The fact her campaign is just now trying to make a serious case against Barack Obama as Commander in Chief is proof of at least one huge chance squandered. It's probably much too little, much too late.