The more pessimistic, possibly realistic, one is that Berlusconi won't even really be out of power.
Other reports in recent weeks offered more pessimistic assessments, including one by the Government Accountability Office that used the same benchmarks but found fewer successes to report.
It is not surprising that theoretical analyses are more pessimistic than experimental ones.
The optimistic scenario, which right now I think is more probable than the pessimistic one, is that the DCorps poll is right that we are three percent up, and that the three percent undecided likely break more our way than GOP because of their demographic alignment, which I discussed earlier.
One of the more pessimistic voices in the investment landscape is that of David W. Tice, whose Dallas-based firm manages the Prudent Bear Fund and the Prudent Global Income Fund.
"It's very pessimistic about the future, more pessimistic than ever before," said one of the officials.
The Bush vision is in the end a profoundly pessimistic one, and, as such, more than a little un-American.
(Asian-Americans, one study found, are more pessimistic than Caucasian-Americans, and are more likely to use pessimism as a way of coping).
The second point is a more obvious one: Felix is just far more pessimistic than Bernanke (and than Obama) about the prospects for the U.S. economy in 2009 and beyond.
