Maybe it's just a coincidence that the home-state delegation of Democratic star-turned-embarrassment John Edwards is watching this week's proceedings in the Mile High City from the mile-and-a-half-high seats.

Then again, maybe it's not.

You can tell a lot about the kind of regard a state is held in by political party officials by looking at the convention seating chart.

Four years ago, when Edwards was the Democratic vice presidential nominee, the North Carolina delegation had front-row seats.

Now that Edwards has admitted to cheating on his cancer-stricken wife, the North Carolina delegation is nestled in the nosebleed seats of Denver's Pepsi Center between two states that hardly figure into Democrats' 2008 plans – President Bush's home state of Texas and soon-to-be Republican nominee John McCain's home state of Arizona.

Also up top are states such as Oklahoma, Nebraska and Tennessee that Sen. Barack Obama has little or no chance of carrying.

Connecticut is in the cheap seats as well. It is home to Sen. Joe Lieberman, the 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee who has since become an independent and is believed to be in contention for the second spot on McCain's ticket.

So who got the good seats?

Obama's home state of Illinois is front and center. Next door is Delaware, usually an afterthought, but prominent because it is the home of Obama's vice presidential pick, Sen. Joe Biden.

Vermont doesn't figure heavily into anybody's electoral vote calculations, but its delegation also got front-row seats. Democratic National Committee chairman and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean no doubt saw to that.

Also in the front tier are the states expected to be the hottest battlegrounds – Florida, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Nevada, Virginia, Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Iowa.

Warning: Congestion ahead

Anybody driving in the Midwest's political battleground states this weekend would be advised to check traffic reports frequently in the event of a campaign bus pileup.

The newly minted Democratic ticket of Obama and Biden and their wives will conduct what has become a political tradition in recent years, the post-convention bus trip, through Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

It's become the favored way to try to string out the momentum of the nominating convention into the following week.

Big, cheering crowds. Scenic backdrops. Flags and banners. A shiny bus with a nifty new campaign logo on the side. And, most important, lots of television cameras.

But this year, because the conventions, for the first time in 52 years, are on successive weeks, the Obama-Biden ticket will not only have to share the spotlight, but, it appears, the road.

John McCain is expected to try to upstage Obama within hours of his nominating speech by announcing his vice presidential running mate at a rally in Dayton, Ohio, on Friday.

Then the presumptive Republican ticket will embark on its own bus trip through Ohio, Pennsylvania and Missouri before the Republican National Convention opens in St. Paul, Minn., on Monday.

Not ready for a third term

By the end of next week, both parties' central talking points will be mind-numbingly familiar, having been endlessly repeated by parades of convention speakers and the other party's surrogates.

You may have heard this from all the Republicans camped out in front of television cameras in Denver: Barack Obama is a fine fellow with a nice family but he's – repeat after me – NOT READY TO BE PRESIDENT.

And you may have heard this from just about every convention speaker: A John McCain presidency would be – in unison now – A THIRD BUSH TERM.

So enraptured are Democrats with their McCain-equals-Bush spin that they have rented a billboard on the freeway into St. Paul with a photo of Bush and McCain embracing and the message, “Does this look like change to you?”

“We're going to spend every day looking for every opportunity to remind voters in the Twin Cities and across the country that a vote for John McCain is a vote for George W. Bush and his failed policies,” Democratic National Committee spokesman Damien LaVera said.

And Republicans, rest assured, will spend every day looking for every opportunity to remind voters in the Twin Cities and across the country that they feel Obama is not ready to be president.

Democrats' Real Thing

Here's a curious report from one of our spies in Denver:

All of the snack stands inside the Pepsi Center are selling Coca-Cola.

Keeping it green

Tossing one's trash can be a complicated matter at this eco-friendly convention. Volunteers stand guard over the garbage cans, directing people to sort their trash into the appropriate bins: landfill, recycle and compost.

Convention fact:

Baltimore hosted the first Democratic National Convention in 1832. Delegates nominated Andrew Jackson.