Hillary Clinton has finally figured it out. If she’s going to win the Democratic presidential nomination, she’s going to have to shut Barack Obama up.

She hasn’t been able to shout him down, even with her most grating jet-powered-nails-on-a-chalkboard delivery.

Nor has she been able to drown him out with the torrential downpours of wonkery she can produce when she struts her policy stuff. During a phone interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer editorial board, she went into full rapid-fire data-burst mode – 320 words per minute and 14 breaths per hour.

Runs in the family, you know. Bill always said he didn’t inhale much, either.

But neither Hillary’s lung capacity nor her volume has kindled Democratic voters’ enthusiasm. They like this new guy Obama – though that’s not the same as saying they’d like to hear more from him. They’re satisfied with just two words: “hope” and “change.”

Hillary wants to play a hand full of policy aces, but Obama’s is solid trump. When she tries to beat him at the hope and change game, it just falls flat.

“Hope” sounds so much more believable coming from him.

As for “change,” even Democrats who gave the Clintons a pass on their every shenanigan for eight years can’t help but pick up just a whiff of overused sheets in the Lincoln bedroom. Smells, they say, evoke the strongest memories. Who can blame them for wishing to avoid another four years of averted eyes, crossed fingers and forced indignation?

Hence both the recent stampede to Obama – guaranteed to leave a fresh scent in your White House – and the Clinton campaign theme clinker of the week, “Barack’s a Plagiarist,” trotted out by her surrogates.

The accusation boils down to, Obama quoted a politician who quoted other politicians.

She can’t beat his rhetoric, nor can she join it, so she’s trying to shut him up by deconstructing the words he borrows?

Oh, for goodness’ sake.

It won’t work, which means her strategists will be desperately hurling more spaghetti at the walls by this time next week, looking for a strand strong enough to stop a bandwagon.

It’s a measure of Obama’s inexperience that he has deemed it necessary to explain his use of quotations that, individually or arranged in sequence, are fair game. He won’t be perplexed for long. He’ll figure out a way to dismiss the plagiarism complaint, as it should be dismissed – probably with a sentence that starts with “hope” and ends with “change.” He’ll deliver it in a dulcet baritone that’s just made for lending castles in the air the illusion of solidity.

Absent a power play of outrageous proportions, even by the Clintons’ standards, Obama will be the nominee and face, in John McCain, yet another opponent who can’t match him in charm, rhetoric or delivery.

One must wonder whether this unquestionably appealing candidate will ever be forced to give a substantive answer to a substantive question. And, if that should happen, whether he has so masterfully seized hold of the public’s unconsciousness that a soothing tone might be sufficient to make the words irrelevant.

Good questions are out there.

Leon Wieseltier, writing in the New Republic about Obama’s callow, let’s-just-talk-this-out approach to a dangerous world, asked one recently:

“Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang, Islamabad, Gaza City, Khartoum, Caracas – does Obama really believe that he has something to propose to these ruthless regimes that they have not already considered? Does he plan to move them, to organize them, to show them change they can believe in?”

Here’s another one: Do Americans understand that if Obama isn’t the most liberal member of the Senate, he’s in the top two? Make him our president, and we’ll all be starting our sentences with “hope” and ending them with “change.” As in, “Hope I can grab a cup of coffee before President Obama mines my pockets for the last of my change.”

Kevin O’Brien is deputy editorial page director of The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. E-mail him at [email protected].