Trail Bytes

As the presidential race heads into the home stretch, CBS News reporters are out on the road traveling with the Bush-Cheney and Kerry-Edwards campaigns.

Read their dispatches and keep up with the latest campaign news in Trail Bytes, updated daily on CBSNews.com

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH

Colorado's a state President Bush had hoped he could take for granted. But no longer. Recent polling shows him still out front but John Kerry is moving up. It's enough to cause concern among Bush campaign strategists.

So Colorado is Mr. Bush's first target today. He's got a rally in the town of Greeley.

In his speeches today, the president will be emphasizing his handling of the war on terrorism. But between now and Election Day, policy will be taking a backseat to politics. Mr. Bush will be using every speech to urge his most ardent supporters to get out the vote.

The Bush re-election strategy is based on an aggressive grassroots operation in key states. And Iowa now numbers among them. The president heads there from Colorado for rallies in Council Bluffs and Davenport.

Mr. Bush lost the state to Al Gore in 2000 but by the fourth smallest margin of the election: just .32% of the vote.

Recent polls show Mr. Bush has a chance to capture Iowa this time, which in combination with a couple of others, could provide the electoral votes he needs should he lose the must-win state of Ohio.

The Bloodshed In Iraq

In his only public remarks yesterday, the president said not a word about the massacre of unarmed Iraqi army recruits outside of Baghdad. Instead, he stayed on message striving to portray the situation in Iraq as positive.

Addressing a rally in a high school ballpark in Alamogorda, N.M., Mr. Bush told several thousand supporters that freedom in on the march in Iraq.

"Think of how far that country has come from the days of torture chambers and mass graves," said the president. He reminded his audience that Iraq will have presidential elections. He might have misspoken. The Iraq elections in January choose a parliament to draft a constitution, not elect a president.

Could Bush Get Hawaii Five-0? How about Four-9?

George W. Bush got clobbered in Hawaii four years ago. He lost the state to Al Gore by a margin of 56%-to-37%. But now, a top aide is putting out the word that Hawaii is becoming "competitive" for Mr. Bush.

The Bush campaign had long ago written off the 50th state. But White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett says all those Bush TV ads are being seen there on the cable news channels and the president is gaining ground - though not enough to make it worth his while to do a campaign swing there.

Pity. This member of the press corps thinks a couple of days campaigning in Hawaii is a great idea.

Let the record show Mr. Bush did do a re-election fund-raiser there on October 23, 2003. Honolulu was a refueling stop that day as Mr. Bush returned from a trip to Asia and Australia.

Of course, were Hawaii deemed to give Mr. Bush an Electoral Vote victory, he might have his inauguration there.

Or not.
--Mark Knoller

SEN. JOHN KERRY, D-MASS.

As he begins the final week of the 2004 presidential campaign, Kerry hits the stump with someone who was virtually invisible in the 2000 campaign: former President Bill Clinton.

Clinton joins Kerry for the first time - seven weeks after undergoing heart bypass surgery - at a Philadelphia rally this afternoon as the two try to fire up Democratic voters eight days before the election.

"We're very confident that former President Clinton's appearance ... will help us excite and motivate the Democratic base and then also remind people of the significant gains America made in 1990s, especially with respect to the economy," said Kerry spokesman Mike McCurry.

The event with Clinton is the highlight of a four-state campaign day, which started with Kerry talking about women and health care this morning in New Hampshire. Following the Philly event, Kerry will fly to the Detroit area - his first visit to Michigan since Sept. 15, as he tries to shore up that regularly-Democratic state's 17 electoral votes - before holding a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

He'll also have an event Tuesday morning in Green Bay, marking Kerry's sixth day in the city this year. The visit comes almost two months to the day since he mistakenly referred to the stadium that's home to the city's revered Packers as "Lambert," not Lambeau Field, a gaffe Dick Cheney has used against Kerry several times.

Kerry will also hit four states tomorrow: Wisconsin, Nevada, New Mexico and Iowa.

Meantime, Kerry waxed religious on Sunday, attending an AME church in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida before delivering a speech on faith and values across town.

Near the end, in a revealing moment, he discussed the criticism he has received from officials in the Catholic Church.

"I know there are some Bishops who have suggested that as a public official I must cast votes or take public positions - on issues like a woman's right to choose and stem cell research - that carry out the tenets of the Catholic Church," said Kerry.

"I love my Church; I respect the Bishops; but I respectfully disagree."

"My task, as I see it, and I said this in the debate with President Bush, is not to write every doctrine into law," he added.
--Steve Chaggaris

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS, D-N.C.

John Edwards marched through two of the key states of the upcoming election over the weekend. While the Democratic candidate for vice president has drawn crowds of up to 10,000 at solo events, Edwards' largest crowd over the weekend barely dented 2,000.

At an event in Orlando, a crowd of hundreds listened to Edwards' latest attack on the president: a second Bush administration would spell disaster for Social Security. "He says he wants to protect Social Security, but then he winks and he nods and the leaks tell us something different," he said.

Citing an article in Fortune Magazine, "a magazine that many of us may not read by George Bush's friends read," Edwards noted Bush plans on raising the retirement age to 72.

"Their attitude is that five more years on the job won't matter, it's not a big deal," Edwards said to the Orlando SEIU workers. "Only someone who's never worked in a factory for forty years would say that," he continued.

Demanding Bush "tell us the truth about Social Security," Edwards directly asked the president, "How much would seniors lose in their lifetime-how much of their benefits would they lose under your plan? How many American factory and mill workers like the ones that I grew up with would now have to work more before they get their retirement benefits?"

"We're going to stop George Bush's plan of robbing Peter to pay Paul. You don't steal from Social Security to give your millionaire friends a tax break," Edwards concluded to rousing applause from the small crowd.

Edwards headed back to Ohio for a bus tour starting in Cincinnati Sunday morning following a visit to Allen Temple AME church.

"The first time that I heard Senator Edwards speak, he reminded me of an old, southern preacher," Reverend Donald Jordan began his introduction. "I don't know when, I don't know how, but mark my words, this man is going to eventually be the President of the United States. The Republicans have nobody who compares with him," Jordan told his congregation.

While churches considered tax-exempt are supposed to stay out of the political fray, the Reverend didn't hide his political affiliation Sunday morning, referring to the doctrine that ensures this separation. "I'm not worried about a 501 C3 doctrine; we're asking you to support him because I believe he and Senator Kerry bring a new vision to this country."

Edwards didn't mention any doctrines or laws when he took the pulpit, but he did acknowledge Jordan's prediction. "I appreciate Reverend Jordan's praise about the future. I'll tell you how much future I want to worry about right now is a week from Tuesday, that's what I want to worry about now, Because we may not know what's going to happen with me down the road, but I know what's going to happen with John Kerry a week from Tuesday, he's going to be elected the next president of the United States."
--Bonney Kapp

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY

During a presidential campaign, reality can take a beating. So much spin and mischaracterization are slung between candidates and their surrogates that it's not surprising that the voting public can often be confused about the facts of basic issues. Over the weekend, the vice president played his part as he clarified one reality but later invented a whole fantasy reality while criticizing John Kerry.

In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Friday, Cheney took a question during a town hall meeting concerning the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. It's a sticky issue for a White House that vowed to hunt down the people responsible for 9/11 hours after it a had happened but has not been able to locate al Qaeda's most recognizable face.

Cheney at first defended their efforts. "You'll notice there haven't been any bin Laden tapes running on the air where he's out broadcasting messages, frankly, because we think he's probably in a deep hole someplace, in hiding. We'll continue on the hunt until we find him."

Then, in an effort to de-emphasize the importance of bin Laden, he explained his version of reality and why this may be a long war on terror.

"We think it's very important, though, to understand the nature of the threat that we're faced with here. Even if you capture bin Laden tomorrow that will not automatically end the nature of the adversary we're faced with here," he told the crowd. "Al Qaeda itself in Arabic stands for 'the base.' And it's not a tightly organized, hierarchical organization where you chop off the head and everything else below it then collapses."

On Saturday, the vice president offered another form of reality. Only this time he did it in a way that would make any Twilight Zone or comic book writer proud - the alternative universe.

For an audience in Grand Junction, Colo., Cheney postulated what the world would have been like if Sen. Kerry had been President Kerry during important occasions in the last 20 years.

"Let's go back to the 1970s when John Kerry was saying we should only deploy
U.S. troops under the authority of the United Nations," he claimed. "So one way the world might look if he had been in charge is we would have ceded our right to defend ourselves to the United Nations."

Jumping forward a decade, he said, "In the 1980s, John Kerry ran for the Senate on a platform of doing away with many of the major weapons systems that Ronald Reagan used to win the Cold War. So if John Kerry had been in charge, the Soviet Union might still be in business."

The vice president then speculated about "President" Kerry during the Gulf War. "In 1991, John Kerry voted against sending American troops to expel Saddam Hussein after he invaded Kuwait," he said. "So if John Kerry had been in charge, Saddam Hussein might still control the Persian Gulf today."

However, there seems to be at least one hole in the vice president's alternative reality, one in which presidential term limits don't seem to exist. The American public must have liked the way President Kerry voted because they re-elected him for three continuous decades.
--Josh Gross