Hope vs. hopeless

My American Spectator story about Hillary's Pennsylvania campaign finale in Harrisburg espies a glimmer of a chance that Team Clinton may yet manage a comeback:

Almost all observers expect Hillary to win today's primary in a state where every credible poll has shown her leading since last year. But if she can win by the double-digit margin suggested by the internal poll the Clinton campaign leaked to Drudge yesterday, Hillary's people are ready to declare a momentum shift based on Obama's apparent inability to win in states that will be major battlegrounds in November.
"Senator Obama has been outspending us three-to-one here in Pennsylvania," Elleithee said. "I think a lot of people are going to have to ask the question, if he fails to win here, despite outspending us three-to-one -- which would be the same pattern as we saw in Texas and Ohio -- he's going to have to start answering a lot of questions as to why."Why can't he close the sale? Why can't he win in these big states, and these swing states in the general election?"

Read the whole thing, and then check out American Spectator staffer Philip Klein's more gloomy prognostication of Hillary's prospects:

The Obama campaign will try to take solace in any loss within single digits. . . . Anything less than a 20-point blowout will all but mathematically eliminate Clinton from overtaking Obama in the pledged delegate count or popular vote.
But in a conference call with reporters yesterday, Clinton's chief strategist Geoff Garin dismissed such numbers as "ridiculous." The campaign argued that Obama had outspent Clinton substantially in Pennsylvania and thus any victory by Clinton would raise further questions about Obama's ability to win working-class voters in big swing states.
Clinton, it's pretty clear, will use any angle to justify continuing her candidacy. The trouble is, financial reports released over the weekend showed Clinton heavily in debt, and Obama with a five-to-one cash advantage.
And that was at the beginning of the month, before all of the spending in Pennsylvania. Unless she and Bill are willing to kick in more of their sizable fortune on a nearly lost cause, this Clinton nostalgia tour may soon be performing its final engagement.

So, is the glass half-empty or half-full? My own article acknowledges the same problems for Clinton that Klein identifies, and any sober observer would estimate her hope for winning in Denver as a longshot.

Perhaps it is my sentimental attachment to underdogs, my love of miraculous comebacks, that causes me to remember that "unlikely" is not the same as "impossible." And I'm beginning to worry that Klein has spent so much time in Pennsylvania lately that he's become bitter, clinging to his guns and religion and poll numbers.

Ultimately, Democrats will choose their own nominee (with some unsolicited help from Rush Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" crew), so it probably doesn't much matter what a couple of reporters think about the Hillary-vs.-Obama contest, especially a couple of conservatives like Klein and me.

But it's pretty impressive -- though almost entirely accidental -- that the Spectator would have two reporters filing two starkly different assessments of Hillary's prospects on the day of the crucial Pennsylvania primary. Diversity!