When Jeff Zeleny at The New York Times says in print that Mitt Romney has a shot at winning the presidential race, you know things have changed for the better. He does so in this article.
Crudely speaking, this is a pundit covering his butt. Zeleny has spent the last six months or more saying Obama has it locked up because that's the outcome he and his pals at NYT seriously wanted and hoped to be true.
Now Zeleny experiences a conflict. He still wants Obama to win, but he also wants to keep his pundit chops in order. He wants to be able to say "I told you so, I predicted the outcome."
If he says, as he does here, that Romney has the momentum, that Obama is playing catch-up, you know he thinks it likely Romney will win. Zeleny hopes he's wrong, but for the sake of his career, needs to go on record saying Romney is sort-of, kind-of, maybe a little ahead.
Presuming Romney actually does win, Zeleny and others like him will trot out columns like these to prove their prescience. Trot them out without emphasizing how late in the campaign they were written.
