Elise Amendola / AP

Here's my NEWSWEEK colleague (the indomitable) Suzanne Smalley with a dispatch from the Clinton roadshow in Oregon. Despite speculation to contrary, Suzanne reports, the candidate is actually "escalating her rhetoric" against Obama.

At a rally in Central Point, Ore., last night, Hillary Clinton didn't leave any doubt that she's still in it to win it. She challenged Barack Obama to a debate in Portland on Friday, where they'll both be campaigning, saying she'll meet "absolutely anytime, anywhere." She stressed her knowledge of controversial local issues, saying Obama is on the wrong side of them. And she taunted Obama for talking a good game without backing it up, not unlike, Clinton said, President George W. Bush.

"My opponent voted for legislation … which gave more tax subsidies to the oil companies, more tax subsidies to the nuclear industry, and which took away the right of states to determine whether [liquefied natural gas] terminals would be placed along their coast. So there's a lot we should be debating about," she told a raucous crowd of about 1,000 supporters. "Back in 2000 some people voted for President Bush because he went around telling people in settings like this that he was a compassionate conservative. Nobody knew what that meant, did they? But it sure did sound good."

... 

The New York senator's resilience and unflinchingly broad smile belied her grim circumstances, three days after she failed to perform well enough in the North Carolina and Indiana primaries to turn the race around. Despite her strong rhetoric, it is now clear that Clinton can't win the Democratic nomination unless the superdelegates overturn the popular vote and Barack Obama's pledged delegate lead. Even if Florida and Michigan votes are fully counted, Clinton still will finish the primary race behind Obama in pledged delegates. How then does the campaign justify continuing?

To hear Clinton's chief superdelegate hunter Harold Ickes tell it, Clinton is continuing the fight because she's convinced she can beat McCain. Clinton has refused to come out and say Obama can't beat McCain (when pressed to by several debate moderators, she has demurred). But in an interview with NEWSWEEK, Ickes strongly suggested that Obama can't win come November. "We have to remember McCain is not a standard, off-the-shelf Republican," Ickes said, echoing the argument he says he's making to superdelegates, and pointing up Clinton's inarguable strength with Roman Catholics, Hispanics and elderly voters in key November battleground states such as Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania. "He will have a lot of appeal for Hispanics. He'll trounce [Obama]."

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