Kerry v Bush: The Facts, the Campaigns and the Spin...

Sen. John Kerry pulled a convention-eve surprise Sunday night, taking time out from his swing across the country to attend a baseball game in Boston between the Red Sox and their hated rivals, the New York Yankees.

He threw the first pitch to Will Pumyea, a Massachusetts National Guard soldier who served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Kerry was continuing on to Florida after the game. He campaigned earlier in Ohio. Both are battleground states in the November election.

He will return to Boston on Wednesday afternoon, hours before he is formally nominated for president in the traditional state-by-state roll call vote.

On the eve of the Democratic convention, a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll of November battleground states released Sunday showed the race between President Bush and Kerry is too close to call in Florida, Ohio and Missouri. Together, the three states will cast 58 of the 270 electoral votes -- more than 20 percent -- that are needed to win the presidency. (Full story)

Amid extraordinary security, nearly 5,000 Democratic delegates and alternates have gathered in Boston for Monday's opening of the first national political convention since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. They are outnumbered 3-to-1 by members of the media. (Special Report: America Votes 2004, the Democratic convention)

Coast Guard boats are patrolling Boston Harbor. Manholes have been welded shut. Few, if any, mailboxes and trash cans are in sight. Interstate 93, the main artery through the city, will be closed during convention hours, and the Boston subway's North Station, a main commuter hub, will be shut down.

Because of those closures, the city has asked workers to stay home during convention week. ($60 million security plan)

Republicans are in town with a 30-member "truth squad" to provide a rapid response to podium speakers. They are borrowing the title of a popular television show to deride what they see as an attempt to repackage Kerry into something they believe he is not.

"I think the reason we're going up there is we're expecting an extreme makeover," Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Bush campaign, said on CNN's "Inside Politics Sunday."

"We want to make sure the American people understand that the John Kerry that may be speaking in the hall is stagecraft."
Richardson: Accentuate positive

Convention chairman Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico, said Democrats planned to accentuate the positive and focus on Kerry's qualities, rather than bashing Bush for what they see as his shortcomings.

"We're going to talk about positive issues. We're not going to be bashing the president at every turn," Richardson said on "Fox News Sunday."

Organizers dodged potential embarrassment Sunday night when unions representing Boston police and firefighters called off plans to picket 29 welcoming parties for delegates.

Many Democratic officials had said they would not cross the picket lines to attend. Last month, Kerry refused to do so to address a mayor's conference in Boston, saying, "I don't cross picket lines. I never have."

The picketing was called off after firefighters reached a new contract agreement with the city earlier in the day. City officials also have reached a basic agreement with the police union but were still working on details.

CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 23 - President Bush said on Monday that political advertisements run by a broad swath of independent groups should be stopped, including a television advertisement attacking Senator John Kerry's war record. But the White House quickly moved to insist that Mr. Bush had not meant in any way to single out the advertisement run by veterans opposed to Mr. Kerry. [..]

Asked on Monday about one of the anti-Kerry advertisements, financed largely by Texas supporters of Mr. Bush, the president said that he wanted to stop "all of them.''

"That means that ad, every other ad,'' he said. [..]

[But] His press secretary, Scott McClellan, said Mr. Bush had not intended to single out the Swift boat advertisement as one that should be stopped.

How is that a flip-flop?

Bush is anti-527s.