Washington Wrap

Dotty Lynch, Beth Lester, Clothilde Ewing, and Dan Furman of the CBS News Political Unit have the latest from the nation's capital.

Wednesday's Headlines

* Bush Strategist Predicts No Bush Bounce out of Convention

* Nancy Reagan supports Bush

* All Things Missouri

* Trail Bytes: Heart Surgery, Near Collision and Food

Lowballing the Bounce? Clearly jazzed that John Kerry hasn't experienced much of a bounce out of his convention, President Bush's re-election campaign predicted on Tuesday that Bush would not experience a bounce after the Republican Convention at the end of the month.

Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for the Bush campaign, said an incumbent president typically gets only two-thirds of his challenger's bounce. "Two-thirds of zero -- and my math is pretty simple here -- is zero," Mr. Dowd told reporters on a conference call. "So that's our expectation on our bounce."

But Kerry campaign spokesman Phil Singer said the president should not feel comfortable unless he is six points ahead of the Democrats, reports the Washington Times. "If George W. Bush doesn't have a solid lead after the Democratic Convention, history would suggest he will lose," Singer said. As for Dowd's prediction of no Bush bounce, Singer said: "Whenever they're in trouble, they resort to lowering expectation."

Meanwhile, the Washington Post looks at how Bush managed to give a 35-minute speech to 2,500 Catholics at the Knights of Columbus on Tuesday, without mentioning Kerry's name. Music to the crowd's ears, Bush told them he would work with them to restrict abortion, provide vouchers for parochial schools and champion a constitutional amendment that would ban same sex marriage.

The Post reports: "The speech was part of the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign's effort to court Catholic voters, who make up about a quarter of the U.S. population and an equal or higher percentage of the electorate in such battleground states as Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio and Michigan -- all of which Bush plans to visit in a campaign swing through the Midwest this week."

As a nonprofit charitable organization, the Knights are unable to make political endorsements because of tax laws.

Reagan and Bush: On Tuesday, the Bush campaign announced that Nancy Reagan, former first lady, is in "full and complete support" of the president's reelection. Her support was in question given her criticism of the administration's restrictions on stem cell research, reports the Associated Press. As campaign spokeswoman Joanne Drake said, "The campaign is certainly about more than one issue."

Nancy Reagan has become a strong advocate for stem cell research after her husband died on June 5, 2004 of pneumonia related to his battle with Alzheimer's disease. Stem cells are believed to hold the key to a treating the disease.

Since her husband's death, Mrs. Reagan has limited her public appearances. Though she will most likely not be attending the Republican National Convention in New York, she has not ruled out campaigning for President Bush. This is in contrast to another Reagan family member, son Ron Reagan, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention where he said, "Whatever else you do come Nov. 2, I urge you, please, cast a vote for embryonic stem cell research," implicitly endorsing John Kerry.

Missouri Has a Big Day: After the voting on Tuesday, Missourians had made several major decisions. First, the state overwhelmingly passed a ban on gay marriage, reports the Kansas City Star, making Missouri the first sate to ban gay marriage by constitutional amendment. "With more than 96 percent of precincts reporting, Amendment 2 was passing with 70.5 percent in favor."

On the Senate side, "Kit Bond and Nancy Farmer cruised to easy primary victories for Missouri's U.S. Senate seat, setting up a showdown between the incumbent and his nationally backed Democratic contender," reports the Star. "Neither Bond nor Farmer bothered to spend much money combating basically unfunded opponents, leaving them several million dollars each for the fall campaign. In Kansas City on Tuesday night, both predicted a close, hard race."

In other ballot news, Democratic primary voters "Democrats fired their standard-bearer, Gov. Bob Holden, on Tuesday and chose Auditor Claire McCaskill as their best hope for staving off Republican control of the Statehouse this fall," reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. McCaskill won the nomination by 5 percent by winning Kansas City and piling "up huge margins in rural Missouri."

And in news from the state's most famous Democratic family – the Carnahans – state Representative Russ Carnahan, son of the late Governor Carnahan and former US Senator Jan Carnahan, "appeared to squeak out a victory over newcomer Jeff Smith on Tuesday to capture the Democratic nomination for the congressional seat now held by retiring U.S. Rep. Richard Gephardt." Gephardt's seat is considered safe, giving the young Carnahan a great chance at moving from MO to DC. His sister, Robin Carnahan, "clinched" the party nomination for Secretary of State "the moment the polls closed" as there were no challenges, reports, KQ2.

Trail Bytes: On the Road with Vice President Cheney in South Dakota, CBS News' Josh Gross reports on the story behind the veep's trip to Sioux Falls to deliver a campaign speech for Larry Diedrich.

Diedrich is vying for the seat once held by Bill Janklow, who resigned after killing a motorcyclist in a traffic accident earlier this year. The Republican lost a special election to Democrat Stephanie Herseth on June 1 and this November's regular election will be a rematch. Diedrich lost last time by less 3000 votes. When he initially entered the race, he was a 30 point underdog but came back to lose by only one point.

Then along came open-heart surgery to replace a bad valve. "Larry's been recovering for a month," according to his Press Secretary Jessica Towhey. "He's just now at full steam."

But he's using it to his advantage. Strangers come up to make sure he's doing all right and he's received hundreds of cards.

"If there is a silver lining to having open heart surgery, it would be this," indicated Towhey, referring to the crowd.

November's ballot will also include the race between Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle and John Thune. Thune lost the 2002 Senate election by the thinnest of margins. A Daschle loss would be very symbolic for an aggressively campaigning Republican party. Add one part representative, one part senate and one bad heart and you get? The state of politics in South Dakota.

Trail Byte: Few question the political experts who say the Midwest is the key battleground for the 2004 presidential election and President Bush and Senator Kerry are really taking that message to heart, campaigning in the same city at the same time on Wednesday, reports CBS News' Steve Chaggaris.

The two candidates will be in Davenport, Iowa on Wednesday, with Air Force One landing in the Quad Cities area just as Kerry's rally gets underway. The crowd count game from each campaign is sure to produce some inflated numbers for each event, all for bragging rights.

Kerry's ever-spinning national press secretary David Wade took a jab at the president regarding the scheduling similarities: "The president may be less than a mile away from our event but he's a million miles away when it comes to having a vision of making America stronger."

While it is the first time both will be campaigning simultaneously in the same city, the two came pretty close to passing each other on the trail last Saturday on Interstate 70 as Kerry drove west to Wheeling, West Virginia from Pennsylvania and Bush drove east to Pittsburgh from Wheeling. The two campaign convoys came within 34 miles of each other before Bush's turned off I-70 onto I-79 towards Pittsburgh.

Meantime, Kerry on Tuesday stopped his caravan in a Wisconsin town that his campaign claimed was merely "passed through" by Bush back in March. A crowd of hundreds greeted him in Cuba City, Wisconsin, the self-proclaimed "City of Presidents," because of its main street lined with 43 shields, each featuring the silhouette of a U.S. president.

While Bush's campaign bus drove by with the president hanging out a window waving (described by some pro-Kerry folks Tuesday as "going 70 miles an hour" and "he looked like a cardboard cutout"), Kerry's folks decided to make a spectacle of his visit, having their candidate shake hands and pose for photos on the city's "Presidential Caboose" that's parked in the center of town.

Just before Kerry left, one man implored that Kerry not "forget" to return to Cuba City to sign his shield if he's elected. Kerry promised he wouldn't forget saying, "It may be the party of the donkey but I've got a memory like an elephant."

Trail Byte: Senator Edwards toured Louisiana Tuesday, speaking at a rally in Baton Rouge, a town hall meeting in Alexandria, and a picnic in Shreveport. He also made three "off the record stops," campaign lingo for planned stops that are not published to maintain as much quaintness as possible. Quaint or not, reports CBS News' Bonney Kapp, the food was the main draw of the day.

The campaign's theme of the day was fiscal responsibility and the candidate spoke on the deficit, closing corporate loopholes and ending corporate welfare. But the focus for many was really on the food.

With full Louisiana-style meals at every stop, the press corps was treated to cheese grits, gumbo, red beans, barbeque ribs and chicken, shrimp, and at least a dozen other options. Edwards even stopped by Lafayette's famous Prejean's Restaurant to grab some lunch and shake patrons' hands, of course. The Senator's check totaled $49 for five items, which according to the pool reporter, included "chicken/sausage gumbo, salad, redfish, jalapeño jack shrimp and something described on the receipt as 'low cal.'"

The tour of food meant the more than 20 pizzas on the plane to Little Rock that night went untouched, as did the piles of cookies on the bus to the Little Rock hotel, a minutes -long drive. Very full reporters began discussing a scheduled day of fast, instead donating the food to charity. A staffer noted it would take the campaign a month to plan.

Edwards speaks at a rally Wednesday morning then buses to Memphis, where he'll tour the National Civil Rights Museum and speak at another rally on Beale Street…which is known for it's BBQ.

Quote of the Day: "Ramsey's campaign manager said negative media publicity had been a detriment," explaining why JonBenet Ramsey's father John Ramsey (R) lost his bid for the MI state House (Detroit Free Press).