Hillary Clinton has given up on “change.” Her new TV ad features the angelic faces of various children sleeping in their homes while the White House phone rings with some pending emergency. Here’s the voiceover:

Your vote will decide who answers that call. Whether it’s someone who already knows the world’s leaders, knows the military, someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world. It’s three A.M. and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want answering the phone?

So much for “if you’re ready to make a change, I’m ready to lead,” and “I embody change.” And so much for the youth vote. This one’s strictly for the parents and grandparents. As Obama has cut deep into the ranks of Hillary’s “pantsuit army,” her touting of establishment credentials is probably a smart move. She never had a shot of her beating Obama as an outsider candidate. And just as he’s embraced the charge of being fresh and substance-free, she should own her Beltway status and advertise her A-list rolodex. (That the names in the rolodex haven’t done her much good lately and that her connections are more cocktail-party than war-room is a different story.)

However, there has not been a single Hillary campaign gambit that doesn’t fall cleanly into one of two categories: the low-blow boomerang or the too-little-too-late. This image shift is decidedly of the latter variety. If she had only picked up all the emergency calls that came in over the past few months, she’d be in far better shape.