Washington Wrap

Dotty Lynch, Douglas Kiker, Beth Lester, Clothilde Ewing, Sean Sharifi and Katie Dyer of the CBS News Political Unit have the latest from the nation's capital.

Wednesday's Headlines

* Conventional Wisdom: Kerry's Boston Dilemma Continues

* Bush Talks Health Care, Not Iraq On Ohio Trip

* Zogby: Kerry Leads in Battleground States

* Democrats Look to Stop Nader

* Veep Watch: McCain Talk Won't Stop

* Gore Points a Finger or Six

Don't Get Me Wrong, I Love Boston: With exactly two months until the Democratic National Convention is set to begin, nothing about the convention is really settled. As the Boston Globe reports, "Where some Bostonians see gridlock, John F. Kerry sees a tourism bonanza. Where Republicans see a convention in the heart of the liberal Northeast, the presumptive Democratic nominee sees Minutemen, John Adams, and John F. Kennedy." And with questions about security, traffic and the actual nomination swirling, Kerry went on the offensive Tuesday to promote the city.

Kerry went further than he has in previous days, upping the PR wattage for his maybe-nominating city. "The showcasing of the city, which we've been planning now for over a year, is going to be a very, very important part of the long-term benefit to the city. We're going to be showing the world the birthplace of American freedom and democracy ….There's an extraordinary story to tell about what makes America strong that comes out of Massachusetts and New England," said Kerry. He then concluded: "I love the city, I live in the city. I love the state … It's my home."

But if Kerry was very pro-Boston, many others are not so thrilled. As the Boston Herald reports, several top Democrats "privately fumed," including Sen. Edward Kennedy, who has been a major backer of Kerry's. According to an eyewitness who spoke with the Herald, "Kennedy privately mocked Kerry at a party fund-raising event this week for failing to consult him, pretending to take orders from the junior senator over the phone … The senior senator, pretending to be on a telephone with Kerry, said, 'Yes, John. Whatever you say, John.'"

And besides Kennedy's alleged pique, if Kerry does not get nominated in Boston, the Herald notes, "it could jeopardize the Democratic convention's federal designation as a National Special Security Event." If that occurs, the Secret Service's role "could be diminished," lowering the overall security of the event and putting more stress on the city of Boston.

CBS News has learned that Kerry is expected to make a decision on delaying the nomination by the end of this week. The Los Angeles Times reports that although Kerry's team had hoped for several weeks to make a decision, the current public debate is forcing the campaign's hand. Rep. Gregory W. Meeks, R- N.Y., told the Times, "Everybody needs to know … We've got to have the focus back on the campaign and beating George Bush, as opposed to what we've got to do about the rules."

Bush Promotes Health Care Plan: Less than 24 hours after his big speech on his plans for rebuilding Iraq, President Bush traveled to Youngstown, Ohio, on Tuesday to talk about the need for community health centers. The dramatic switch to domestic issues "underscored how intent his campaign was to show that the war had not distracted him from the everyday concerns of voters," The New York Times reports.

The Times says Bush used his visit to Youngstown – a Democratic stronghold in a 2004 battleground state – to "promote his administration's five-year goal of opening or expanding 1,200 health centers in the United States to serve an additional 6.1 million people, especially low-income and uninsured patients. But critics call it a hit-or-miss approach that provides solid, free health care in communities lucky enough to have attracted federal dollars and that leaves uninsured patients elsewhere without similar places. The Ohio centers Mr. Bush focused on Tuesday were created years before he came to office."

The Bush campaign told The Times that even if the president has little hope of picking up many votes in a section of Ohio that was Al Gore country in 2000, "events like the one on Tuesday keep him competitive and force the Kerry campaign to spend time and money here without expending Mr. Bush's campaign resources."

USA Today reports that, despite sinking poll numbers and continuing violence and upheaval in Iraq, Bush "acted like a man with no worries and an insurmountable lead over Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the Democrat who wants his job."

"During an informal exchange with two doctors, a federal health official and two women whose health scares had happy endings thanks to a federally funded clinic, Bush joked, teased and gave no hint that he's concerned about Iraq, the election or anything else," USA Today reported.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post used the Youngstown visit to highlight what voters in some swing states already know: They're going to see a lot of both Bush and Kerry in the next five months and change.

Slight Advantage for Kerry in Half of the Battlegrounds: A recent Zogby Poll shows John Kerry leading George Bush in eight of sixteen battleground states. The two candidates remain in a statistical dead heat in the remaining eight states.

Interactive online interviews of 10,605 likely voters, who were weighted to reflect the likely electorate, were taken in Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire, West Virginia, Tennessee and Arkansas between May 18 and May 23. The survey came in the wake of more than $115 million spent on television ads by both campaigns.

Pollster John Zogby says that if Democrats and Republicans hold on to all of the states that each party won comfortably in 2000, and the advantages portrayed in these 16 battleground states held, Kerry would win a 102 electoral-vote victory over Bush.

Coming At Nader with Carrots and Sticks: Still upset over the 2000 election, a number of political operatives of past and present are joining forces to knock independent candidate Ralph Nader out of the race. Veterans of both the Howard Dean and Wesley Clark campaigns, two camps widely applauded for the grassroots efforts in the early stages of the primaries, have launched campaigns, with the hope they can persuade potential Nader voters to support Democratic candidate John Kerry.

But the Boston Globe reports: "As in the primaries, when competing strategies ruffled feathers, the groups disagree about how best to go after Nader."

On one hand there is the PAC and website called StopNader.com, built by alumni of the Draft Clark 2004 movement. The group will start running on Monday a scathing television ad in the battleground states of Oregon, Wisconsin and Washington, D.C., which links Nader's candidacy in 2000 to President Bush's policies. "Ralph, what's more important, your nation or your ego?" the announcer asks. "Don't do this to us again." Bud Jackson, a consultant to the group, tells CBS News the group is prepared to take an aggressive approach to the Nader candidacy and is prepared to spend time and money to stop him from gaining traction, such as filing a friend of the court brief, where Nader has launched a court challenge to state signature rules for ballot access.

On the other hand, there's The Nader Factor, which employs former members of another Draft Wesley Clark group and is headed by former Dean communications director Tricia Enright and former Gephardt backer David Jones. Whereas StopNader is prepared to take a "hard-line" approach to the Nader candidacy, Enright stresses that her group is not an anti-Nader group, but rather an effort to bring Nader supporters to their camp by explaining the issues they have in common. Her group has taken a softer approach, with their current ad featuring a high school English teacher who says he supported Nader "because I love my country," but now understands that his vote "undermines all the issues I care about." Their ads began running on Tuesday in Wisconsin and New Mexico.

Whether either strategy will be successful remains to be seen. Nader has maintained he is in the race to stay and campaign spokesman Kevin Zeese tells CBS News the groups' efforts have a counteractive effect and that it has made them stronger and not weaker.

"Sad the Democrats, through these front groups, are spending their resources trying to deny voters a choice in the upcoming election. They should rename themselves the Anti-Democrat Party," Zeese said. CBS News has also been told heard that other groups are forming to fight legal challenges to Nader's attempts to get on state ballots.

Nader is campaigning in Boston and Amherst on Wednesday and has started a marathon tour, which will take him to 11 states including Massachusetts, Connecticut Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania in the coming week.

Veep Watch -- Gephardt Talks Up McCain: For someone who's made little secret of his desire to be the Democratic vice presidential candidate this fall, Rep. Dick Gephardt did an awfully good job promoting a man many Democrats (not to mention smitten political press corps) think would be a Dream Ticket: Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

Gephardt, who has reportedly been extensively vetted by the Kerry campaign in its search for a No. 2, was in Monterrey, Calif., speaking at the Leon Panetta Lecture Series when he was asked about the prospects of a Kerry-McCain ticket. The New York Times, citing CNN, reports that Gephardt called McCain "very attractive figure in American politics" and "would be accepted by the Democratic Party." Gephardt said McCain is a "very bipartisan figure" and is "someone a lot of Democrats could get interested in."

Gephardt is not the only liberal talking about a bipartisan ticket. Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant says that Kerry himself is fascinated with the idea but that picking a Republican could prove to be a major distraction for Kerry. Oliphant wrote: "Kerry's fascination with the possibilities of cross-party alliance this fall (with John McCain or even Chuck Hagel) is itself fascinating. However, the insider conversation has turned too much toward how he can implore one of them to join him. This risks the kind of negotiation over a president's authority that Ronald Reagan unwisely toyed with vis a vis Gerald Ford during the Republican convention in 1980."

Appealing to the Left: Former Vice President Al Gore will deliver a major foreign policy speech this afternoon at a New York City event sponsored by MoveOn PAC. In it, Gore will call for the resignation of six members of the Bush Administration, including Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice and George Tenet.

The speech comes one day before John Kerry is scheduled to deliver an address on Iraq in Seattle. Gore's speech will emphasize the ways that Americans are "endangered by the bitterness created throughout the Islamic world-and beyond- by US policy." He will also link Bush's Iraq policy and the torture of Iraqi prisoners. MoveOn, known to appeal to the liberal base of the Democratic Party, will use Gore to excite liberal Democrats before Kerry delivers what is sure to be a more moderate address.

Quote of the Day: "It's the worst idea I've heard on timing since I gave my address at 2 a.m." – Former Sen. George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential candidate, on John Kerry's consideration of a plan to delay accepting the party's presidential nomination. McGovern's famously late speech took place long after most voters had gone to sleep. (AP)