After Clinton’s decisive victory in Pennsylvania pollsters need to parse the effectiveness of her last-minute advertisement, employing images of Pearl Harbor and Osama bin Laden. She was expected to win the Keystone State anyway, of course, and Obama’s people were quick to remind folks that they had narrowed a 30-point lead to a 10-point victory over the course of a few months. And most of the voters she got (older, whiter, bluer of collar) were ones many had ceded to her long before the bitter-voter brouhaha.

But did that fleeting image of bin Laden help persuade some of those last-minute voters she looks to have won? It couldn’t have hurt, her people must be thinking, in which case you can expect to see more subliminal images marching through her ads: earthquakes, floods, Vesuvius erupting. “It’s the toughest job in the world, you need to be ready for anything,” the announcer declares, and only a superhero (aided by her league of superdelegates of course — join now and you could be looking at an ambassadorship to someplace nice in about eight months!) can save the planet.

I don’t want to add anything to the opinions already out there about the toll this is or is not taking on the party. Like Will Rogers, I only know what I read in the papers, and seeing the coverage of last night’s primary in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal side-by-side was an instructive reminder of the importance of perception. “Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton scored a decisive victory over Senator Barack Obama on Tuesday in the Pennsylvania primary, giving her candidacy a critical boost as she struggles to raise money and persuade party leaders to let the Democratic nominating fight go on,” ran the Times lede — a scrappy kid-says-in-the-picture story that goes on to say that “her victory nonetheless gives her a strong rationale for continuing her candidacy in spite of those Democrats who would prefer to coalesce around Mr. Obama.”

The Journal’s take was slightly more downbeat, at least if you’re a Hillary supporter. “Hillary Clinton kept her presidential candidacy alive with a decisive victory in Pennsylvania’s Democratic primary, but still faces long odds in her quest to overtake front-runner Barack Obama on the road to the party’s nomination,” begins the report, going on to note that her campaign was struggling for money and that her margin of victory probably wouldn’t change the conversation.

The Murdoch-owned Journal has arguably been more Obama-friendly in its coverage of the election in general, but its worth remembering that the Murdoch-owned New York Post started being friendlier to Clinton when it was obvious she would win her senate seat the second time. Is it just because he likes a good news story? (Look at the paper’s coverage of the departure of the WSJ’s managing editor, also on the front page: “Editor Out as Murdoch Speeds Change at WSJ,” making it sound like Marcus Brauchli was old and in the way.) Or does he know something the Times doesn’t, ie, when to back a winner?

More disturbing than invoking the Evil Cave Dweller before the closing bell were remarks Clinton made about Iran. “I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran,” she smiled sweetly on ABC’s Good Morning America yesterday. “In the next ten years, in which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.” Actually, we’re able to totally obliterate them now. Maybe she was thinking of her opponent. Or maybe she just wants to assure any Democrats leaning toward McCain that she remembers the Beach Boys too.