From NBC's Ron Allen
PORTLAND, Maine -- "It's Only Been a Week…."

President Obama got a lot of laughs with that line, as he sarcastically went after one of his favorite targets, "the pundits," and all the back and forth about the new health-care law -- much of that commentary about how the public does not support the new law. The "only a week," line was part of a riff now being repeated by the president about how after he signed the new law, the predictions of Armageddon, and "end of freedom as we know it," never materialized. In fact, Obama says, "It turned out to be a pretty nice day." More laughter.

The president seemed to be enjoying himself now that health-care reform has become law. Some of the folks who keep up with him every day, I don't, say his mood appears noticeably lighter. He's won. He's less burdened. But he's still out here campaigning.

The fact of the matter is, the country has debated health-care reform more than a week. It took a year of and some creative and aggressive political moves down the stretch to pass the president's signature domestic initiative. Imagine the narrative had it failed. And a week after it's become law, the President still feels the need to essentially sell health care to an apparently skeptical, or perhaps only confused country, that still reacts more negatively than positively in various polls. Polls the President may dismiss publicly, but that his aides no doubt pay attention to privately.

The Maine event was before a very friendly audience. The crowds outside were quite vocal, Obama critics and supporters alike. Maybe because the president hadn't been to Maine since the campaign -- perhaps because the public argument about health care, that got really rowdy, is far from finished.

The administration's small business administrator, Mainer Karen Mills, introduced the president and kicked things off with a homespun feel. From then on, it was the President in campaign mode, introducing several Mainers in the audience who he said would be immediate beneficiaries of the new health-care law, a small business owner eligible for tax credits to help cover the cost of insuring employees, a widow who lost her husband and her retirement savings paying for medical care, because they hit a lifetime insurance payment cap during his illness.

The president laid out a list of immediate benefits, as he had before -- and as he probably will again. At the end of the day, there still seems to be a huge disconnect in the country. While the administration proclaims a historic victory decades in the making, the public seems, at best, unsure and, at worst, not convinced.

That dynamic has endured longer than a week.

From NBC's Ron Allen
Outside the event where President Obama will conduct his town hall, there is an anti-Obama protestor with a gun -- a pistol strapped to his lower leg.

The local police chief said it's legal for the man to have a registered handgun -- as long as it is not concealed. What's more, he is on private property, a church yard, which has given him permission to be there.

*** UPDATE *** More on the man with the gun... William Kostric is a married man in his mid 30S who works in sales. He says he moved here to New Hampshire from Arizona about a year ago, because it's a "live free or die" state -- and he thought Arizona was becoming too restrictive with its gun laws.

He's passing out a bookmark that says, "Join the Second Amendment Revolution, the most exciting pro-liberty movement in over 200 years."

He's a Ron Paul supporter, who opposes just about everything Obama, including health care reform.

The local police say he is within his rights to carry a handgun openly under state law. He was carrying a 9-mm Smith and Wesson strapped to his lower leg.

Police say he's OK on a public sidewalk. Kostric says he has permission from a church just down the street from the high school to be on its private property.

He says he was approached by a "detective," possibly a Secret Service Agent, who told him he could be arrested within 1,000 feet of a school with a weapon under a federal law. Kostric moved back to private property.

When Obama arrived, the police had Kostric under surveillance. A local police captain said the Secret Service has been "in the loop."

Kostric has been about 50 to 75 yards from the entrance to the high school, since about 11:00 am ET, doing interviews and carrying a sign and his gun and police have had their eye on him. But as long as he's been "cooperative," they have watched, but let him be.

From NBC's Ron Allen

SCRANTON, Penn. -- Maybe the reason Hillary Clinton popped up at the final presidential debate was because it was convenient to her New York home. Perhaps, as the joke goes, she was there just in case McCain or Obama couldn't make it.  Or maybe -- just maybe -- it was because she's stepping up her efforts to help Barack Obama and Joe Biden win the White House.

With HRC - as we've come to call her - the question of motives often lurks not far from the surface, especially in the aftermath of her bruising and ultimately unsuccessful fight with Obama for the role she once saw as inevitable.

I recently had the chance to interview Clinton after a campaign event in Scranton, PA.  As always, she was gracious, charming, and well prepared. The first thing she said, after a very welcoming  "Hello Ron," was, "I love your wife's show." (My wife co-hosts a nationally-syndicated morning news program on public radio.)
 
The cynic in me muttered, "They've prepped her with a great way to disarm the interviewer." But my inner realist countered, "Come on, you're not so important that she needs a file on you. She probably really does listen to the show." After all, it does air in New York. As we chatted on, she made a few observations that only a listener would know, and I realized she was -- in fact -- being sincere.
 
I felt a bit awkward for thinking otherwise.
 
It's a familiar dilemma for anyone who's paid much heed to the illustrious political careers of the charming and powerful Clintons.  Can you believe them? Or is it really all about them and whatever they're after?
 
I covered Hillary Clinton's primary campaign for the better part of four months, usually from very early in the morning to very late at night. Whatever their politics, her observers in the press corps had to admire her sheer will, determination, and command of the issues. She was present, without fail, every day.

Now, as Clinton campaigns for Barack Obama, the inevitable question arises: Has she really embraced her former foe? Or is she really just plotting for 2012?

Bill Clinton, no stranger to suspicions about his and his wife's motives, routinely jumps to Hillary's defense in his campaign speeches. He insists that his wife has campaigned harder than any defeated opponent ever has for the eventual nominee -- "more than all the runners-up combined," he says.  (If Hillary has really held 50 events for Obama, as her husband claims, she's campaigning almost as hard for Obama as McCain is campaigning for himself.)

Listening to her speak before a crowd of several thousand in Scranton, one turn of phrase jumped out to veterans of her campaign.  From Iowa to Puerto Rico, she often said that "it took a Clinton to clean up after the first President Bush, and it will take a Clinton to clean up after another one."  In Pennsylvania, her pitch for Obama replaces the word Clinton with "Democrat." It's an example of how a politician can easily adjust for the political requirement of the moment, and it also -- to some -- suggests some insincerity.  Same phrase, different occasion.
 
In my interview with Clinton, it was interesting to hear how some of her views about Obama have changed. During the primary, she questioned Obama's "association" with the now much-mentioned Bill Ayers, saying that the public needed to know the full extent of their relationship. Now, when asked if the Republicans have been crossing the line by adopting the same line of attack, she simply replied, "I think that anytime you get negative...it doesn't do anybody a service."  

During their primary contest, Clinton claimed Obama would not be able to withstand a full-scale Republican attack. But now, she told me, "he can because circumstances have changed," referring to the economic crisis and voters' hunger for solutions over the attacks that might resonate in more stable times.  But she later added a caveat that was hardly a full-throated vote of confidence for Obama's staying power. "Absent this economic crisis," she speculated. "You know...  who knows?" 

Even as Clinton predicts that Obama is closing the deal -- saying that "it's all falling into place" for the Democratic nominee –- she sometimes seems to describe his win as more inevitable than earned. "I hear all the time, people say, well ...I don't have any choice now, ... or you know, I'm convinced."

Don't have any choice now? Oh.

Here in northeast Pennsylvania, where her family has roots, Clinton's mission is to rally conservative Democrats, who supported her in big numbers but have been slow to embrace Obama. She says that her pitch to folks still not backing Obama is a warning. "You can't reward the Republicans," she insists to past supporters still flirting with the Republican ticket. "You've voted for them before for guns and abortion...But we're in trouble now." 

(Cue Clinton's criticism of Obama for his infamous "bitter" comment, in which he lashed social conservativism to economic woes.  How times have changed…)
 
Ultimately, Clinton's effort will be judged by how many of her supporters vote for McCain. It's possible that her efforts may in the end have little impact on the outcome of the race.  And she recently said there's very little chance she'll run for president again, or be considered for the Supreme Court, a job rumored to interest her should Obama win.

The only thing certain: her fans, followers, skeptics and foes will continue to ask the question that Clinton famously pondered aloud during the most uncertain period of her tumultuous primary run: "What does Hillary want?"

From NBC's Ron Allen
NEWARK, Ohio -- For two days, Biden rode a bus south, through Eastern Ohio. His route parallels the Ohio River for the most part, along the border with West Virginia and then where it bends a bit West forming the border with Kentucky.

Biden is running a leg of a relay that "Team Obama" has been charting across this prized state with the two nominees and big-name surrogates, like the Clintons, here seven-straight days. Bill, and then Hillary Clinton will each carry the baton separately later this week.
 
It's obviously a state Obama is trying very hard to win, for perhaps obvious reasons. 
 
In Ohio, the Obama campaign seems somewhat obsessed with numbers, beginning with the 118,000 or so vote John Kerry lost this state by, and therefore, the presidency.
 
Biden's staff circulated a memo, for example, with some numbers:
-- 89 Ohio offices for Obama
-- 43 miles is the farthest distance any Ohioan lives from an office
-- 13 barns have been painted with Obama logos. (We haven't seen them.)
-- 1900: the last year a presidential candidate visited a place called Georgetown, where Obama dropped by last week.
 
But in 2008, it's really all about those 118,000 votes.
 
A local newspaper reporter, traveling on Biden's bus said, "He's hitting the battlegrounds in The battleground."

He's campaigning through a string of counties split by President Bush and Kerry four years ago, with an emphasis on building up the numbers where the Democrats won, and more importantly shaving down the margins where they lost.

That's why Biden was on stage outdoors under a full moon, on a warm Indian summer night, in Marietta, Ohio, Washington County, Appalachia. It's an old coal-mining town. Employers like the nearby steel plant have hit hard times. The population is shrinking. Poverty rates are rising. President Bush won here by a comfortable margin.

The campaign says a place like this isn't necessarily "friendly turf." But this year they clearly see it as fertile ground. The crowd is almost exclusively white, middle and working class. Voters the "Joe Biden from hardscrabble Scranton, PA" has been sent here to connect with.
 
Much of Biden's speech on this evening gushes with empathy and understanding. He probably touches on every kitchen-table issue that's out there, pulling at the crowd's heartstrings with stories about the parents who must break the news to their college-age daughter, that there's no money for another semester of school. And there's the story about the guy who doesn't know how much it costs these days to fill up his car with gas, because he never has enough money to even try to top off his tank.
 
We've heard all of this before, and Biden's message is drawn from unfortunate, even tragic, real-life experiences he says he's heard along the trail. But the Democrats hope in Ohio, that they're reaching a lot of voters perhaps for the first time.

They're reaching into smaller towns, Marietta has some 14,515 people, and more rural communities like that town of Georgetown that hadn't seen a presidential candidate in more than 100 years. It's now no secret they're trying to do the same thing in other battlegrounds.
 
At stops later in the heavily Republican exurbs of Lancaster and Newark, Biden promises Obama's public-works plan to fix bridges, roads and infrastructure will bring 76,000 new jobs to Ohio.

In this state, where Biden calculates for his audience that they've lost some 240,000 manufacturing jobs the past eight years, crowds rise to their feet, cheering for the issue Democrats hope helps eliminate that 118,000-vote edge.

And summing it all up, Biden gives this assessment of McCain's campaign. "While the economy is going to hell in a hand basket…they're running the most scurrilous campaign in modern history."

Biden's Eastern Ohio bus ride ends with a turn northwest to the center of the state and its capital Columbus. Team Obama has no doubt it will run up big numbers here, and in Ohio's other urban centers. At a Democratic campaign office he rallies the ground team already hard at work with early-voting underway, predicting that this election will show how "the Obama campaign revolutionized American politics."

If not a revolution, they hope they've figured out enough new places to campaign, where Democrats don't usually go, to avoid coming up 118,000 votes short, or worse, again.

From NBC's Ron Allen
Here's something Joe Biden said, again, recently. "In my neighborhood, you want to say something about me, look me in the eye and tell me."

The crowd under an outdoor pavilion in Jefferson City, Mo., burst out in applause and rose to its feet.

"Say it to me straight up," Biden bellowed, sounding like a tough kid from Scranton PA might have back in the day.

Biden was criticizing McCain for not looking Obama in the eye at their last debate (or the one before that), and for not leveling some of the "character" attacks in some of his TV ads and stump speeches, like, "Who is the real Barack Obama?"...directly at Obama.

So, today in Lisbon, Ohio, when Biden sat down for a cheeseburger at the Steel Trolley Diner, and began answering a few questions from the traveling press corps, for the first time since way back in September, it seemed like a good time to ask whether he -- "Straight up" -- has contacted his old friend McCain to give him a piece of his mind?  

"A while ago I did," Biden said. "I called him a while ago."

Not recently? 

"No it's been -- just since before Sept. 11th."
 
Back then, Biden was concerned about how the candidates' families were being drawn into the campaign by some negative accusations floating around.

On Sept. 11th, Biden, Obama and McCain all attended a community service event at New York's Columbia University. Biden spoke briefly to McCain there, after trying to reach him by telephone unsuccessfully several times, Biden's aides say.

It was apparently a very brief meeting. Biden's people say McCain made it clear "he didn't want to talk about it."

And it apparently did not accomplish very much, since the campaign has heated up considerably since then, with Obama's "associations" with people like 60's radical Bill Ayers taking center stage.

Biden especially condemns McCain TV ads that talk about terrorism and Obama. In an interview on MSNBC's Hardball, Biden warned, "You don't throw race and terrorism" together, adding "that's a combustible mix … where people are angry."

In fact, at every stop Biden charges that all of McCain's ads now are negative.

So has he tried to reach his old friend John again? It seems obvious watching and listening to Biden that the attacks bother him.

I asked, why not just say, "Man to man," like the guys in ol' Scranton, "You gotta do something?"

Biden responded, "I know John knows my views. I know he knows my views. I expressed them in a -- slightly different way -- not a telephone call -- earlier, it's John's campaign," referring to that meeting on Sept. 11th.

Maybe it was quite a "straight up" talk after all.

Now there's speculation McCain may bring up the "Ayers issue" in the final presidential debate. And the other day Biden warned that McCain may regret his attacks "for the rest of his life."

They'll certainly have a lot to talk about, face to face, when all of this is over.

From NBC's Ron Allen
These days, it can feel a bit strange being in the Hillary Clinton press caravan.
 
The morning newspaper headlines scream about how she should cash it all in, how the race is over. Magazine covers proclaim Barack Obama the winner. We all read the polls. We all do the math. We all think we're pretty smart.
 
It can feel a bit odd to carry those newspapers and all of those thoughts onto her press plane and watch her cheerfully appear there up front, ready to take on another day, never showing any hint of doubt. Nothing at all suggests it's not just yet another day on the long march to the nomination.
 
But while watching her, questioning her, and listening to her give speech after speech to crowds of passionate supporters, you can't help but wonder what is she really thinking? Only she, and perhaps a few people very close, know.
  
She has to be upset, disappointed, anyone would be but angry? How would you feel if you had your eyes on a promotion at the office, had worked real hard, had the experience, had paid the dues, and then someone younger and less experienced, someone you'd given advice to, mentored a bit, came along and ruined your dream?
 
Colleagues, and even friends and relatives, ask when we're coming home? When will she drop out? The answer from the campaign's point of view is that we're going all the way to Denver in August perhaps, until there's a nominee. How can that square with those headlines saying it's over?
 
They're planning for Oregon and Kentucky next week. We're off to South Dakota before that. At the same time, we know Obama is heading to Michigan and Florida. We know he probably will proclaim "victory" with a majority of pledged delegates after Oregon. 
 
Meanwhile, Clinton's aides still talk about how "electability" is all that really matters -- and those swing voters, swing states, and even swing superdelegates. Heard that last one for the first time on the day Obama took the superdelegate lead.
 
Ultimately, of course, the question is how can you be more electable than someone you can't beat in most of the elections you've competed in head to head? Isn't the score 31 to 16? (with Texas for neither candidate).
 
Still, Clinton presses on in West Virginia. She tells crowds that every Democratic nominee has carried the state since 1976, and no Democrat has won the White House since 1916 without the state. Will a big win here, and the logic of history, trump all that's gone before it?

Someone said it's a bit like a marathon runner who is determined to complete the entire 26-mile course. I've never done it. But I've seen the joy and satisfaction and even pain on the faces of those runners finishing hours after the winner -- competing on their own terms.

A couple of days ago, I ran into a friend who's an entrepreneur, with a business a few years old.

"Of course," she said, Clinton should continue to the end. She then then pointed out that there were many doubters along her way from that first business idea to a successful enterprise who just knew it would all end in failure.

You have to follow your dreams as far as possible, she advised, and then headed off to a staff meeting. Business is quite good. Good thing she didn't quit. But then again, another editorial today was certain Clinton should get out for the good of the party, or for her own good.

At a farmer's market in Charleston, W.V., on primary day, Clinton wears that ever-optimistic smile, shakes every hand in sight, poses for pictures with anyone and everyone. She's a star! They absolutely love her.

"She looks shorter than on TV."

"Prettier."

"I'm standing two feet from her," a man tells someone on his cell phone who probably doesn't believe him.

"Keep going, keep going," urges a woman almost tugging on her arm.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think she will do just that -- at least until every state has voted. I think she wants the satisfaction of finishing the race, especially since so many are saying she shouldn't.
 
Clinton often tells a story about playing girl's basketball in elementary school. No one was allowed to cross half court. You either played offense or defense -- three-on-three. You were only allowed three dribbles. Why? The answer was something vague, she says, about how playing like the boys would be bad for girls' hearts, or something.
 
I sense the senator is now determined to finish this game, by her own rules, and regardless of what the boys have to say.

From NBC's Ron Allen
There was a very interesting discussion on the flight back to D.C. from Indianapolis. By the time we landed, the Clinton campaign was proclaiming, "We shocked the world" by winning Indiana. "A win is a win," was the rallying cry, as the margin narrowed.

Meanwhile, the Clinton press team did everything possible to minimize Barack Obama's win in North Carolina. He has a "built-in advantage" there, they said. It was a state where they knew the "demographics" were going to be tough, referring the state's African-American community. Turns out, his margin overall was greater than her's in Pennsylvania.
 
But Clinton's aides continue to argue she's the stronger nominee, because she continues to do well with the most important voters, crucial swing voters, who will make the difference in a race with John McCain in November, blue-collar and working-class voters, most of whom are white.

But how does a candidate claim to be the strongest and most electable nominee, when that candidate has very little support with some of the Democratic Party's most loyal followers, African-American voters? Wouldn't it be fair to say that ignoring that "demographic" tends to marginalize the significance of those voters, who also historically have felt somewhat taken for granted by Democrats?

When asked about the fact that Obama had won a significant, and apparently growing segment of the African-American community's votes, the response from Clinton's aides was to suggest that, by November, she would be able to heal whatever problems existed. And that she would be able to unite the party, in part, because of the Clinton family's many decades of such a positive record on matters of race and civil rights.
 
But when asked, well, wouldn't Obama enjoy the support of the segments of the Democratic electorate that have voted for Clinton -- those working-class white voters, the answer was full of doubt and concern. He's relatively new on the political scene. He's not very well known and doesn't have much of a track record, was the essence of their argument. Who knows what might happen?
 
A few weeks ago, Rep. James Clyburn (SC) made several comments laying out his observations about the Clintons' relationship with the African-American community. Let's just say it's not good, he basically said. And I think most reasonable people would say, the decreasing share of the black vote falling in the Clinton camp of late suggests that relationship is probably not improving.
 
Here's the point. To win the nomination now, the Clinton strategy, moving on to West Virginia and Kentucky and elsewhere, seems to have little to do with winning over African-American voters.

"We're not conceding any vote," spokesmen often say in conference calls. Yet the places the campaign goes and the people at the events, don't seem to support that contention.

This is a unique moment in the nation's electoral history for many reasons. The black electorate has been flexing its muscle. Today, Clinton's advisors argued that Obama hasn't proven he can win the votes of blue-collar voters, and that's the crux of the argument they'll make to the dwindling pool of undecided superdelegates.

But don't they also have to explain how they'll win over those Democrats now supporting her in single digits, especially since many of them already are convinced a historic victory, unimaginable not long ago, already has been won?

From NBC's Ron Allen and NBC/NJ's Athena Jones
In a press conference aboard the flight from Cleveland to Columbus, Clinton wanted to talk about the campaign's upcoming economic summit meeting in Zanesville -- which will focus "not only on problems, but solutions" in Ohio where the economy is "unbelievably important."

"Inflation is up, prices of everything are going up," she said. "We are sliding into a recession." When asked what's the major difference between herself and Obama on the economy, Clinton replied with "experience," "specifics..." And she then outlined her plan for a moratorium on foreclosures and a freeze on subprime adjustable mortgages.

Regarding last night's debate, Clinton said she "drew some good contrasts" with Obama. "I was really pleased by it. I thought that once again we drew some good contrasts and obviously I was pleased to talk about issues that I, you know, care a lot about and know something about and thought that that came across."

She disagreed with the prize fight analogy about knockout punches -- and whether any were landed -- saying it was a "debate" not a fight. I think that a lot of people who watched it would come away and feel very positive and comfortable about what I said and what I presented as my credentials and my positions on these issues and I think there were some real contrasts that were drawn."

On the perception that the race could soon be over, Clinton noted that many people have yet to vote, and those folks are focusing on the big questions of who's the better commander-in-chief and who would best handle the economy.

From NBC's Ron Allen
LORAIN, Ohio -- Hillary Clinton is at a town hall here, listening to an elderly man vent about financial problems; he's either losing or lost his house -- he was hard to understand because of an accent. It was a very odd moment, with Clinton standing just a few feet from him. It was a bit tense because he was so emotional. Clinton accepted an envelope from him and promised to help. She has two residents on stage with her who are facing foreclosures; they told their stories to the crowd.
 
The only jab at Obama: "Hope is not a plan...," in her opening her remarks.

Today, it was Hillary Clinton full of compassion and empathy for working people facing foreclosure, mountains of school loans, and taxes.

After anger, sarcasm, today it was empathy. At one point she said, "I got a little hot there the other day in Cincinnati...." and says she was really mad, because Obama was sending YOU false, misleading and discredited information.

*** UPDATE *** NBC/NJ's Athena Jones adds... Here's Clinton's full quote:
"This is a big difference in this campaign between me and my opponent. You see, I believe in quality affordable healthcare for everyone, and some of you may have seen. I got a little, uh, a little hot over the weekend down in Cincinnati," she said to cheers and applause. "Because I don't mind having a debate. I don't mind airing our differences, but I really mind it when Sen. Obama's campaign sends you literature in the mail that is false, misleading and has been discredited. That is not the way to run a campaign to pick the Democratic nominee for president."

Ohio and Texas are must-win states for Clinton and recent polls show Obama closing the gap in the former, although Clinton still leads, and show him leading her in Texas. Two other polls give the Illinois senator a double-digit lead nationally.

During the moment when the disabled veteran asked a long, difficult to understand question that seemed to have something to do with losing his home and being a good parent, Clinton held the microphone for him and listened intently as he spoke before accepting a packet of papers from him and saying she would try to help.

From NBC's Ron Allen
On a stage with American flags behind her, and a phalanx of retired generals backing her, Clinton seemed to assume the role of commander-in-chief, for a "major" foreign policy speech. Slowly and deliberately she laid out her view and concerns about the world.

The world today compares with the time when Harry Truman took office, she began. (She never mentioned this, but four months after taking office Truman approved dropping two atomic bombs on Japan.)

Then, in one of the few references to Obama, while referring to President George Bush, she said we've seen the tragic result of a president without wisdom or experience in foreign affairs, and we can't let that happen again.

Later, while laying out her "New American Strategy," she said people won't need to guess whether she needs an instruction manual to deal with the world. Along with Iraq, she named Afghanistan and Pakistan as two other failures of Bush foreign policy. She talked about the emergence of China and the need to "level the playing field" for trade.

She vowed to end the era of "cowboy diplomacy." On Iraq, she emphasized the need for a carefully planned withdrawal, and the moral obligation to take care of Iraqis who have worked with America, and continue to do so.

Another swipe at Obama came later when she said his desire to sit down with the leaders of rogue nations "doesn't meet the real-world test of foreign policy."

Of McCain, she said he's a friend, but he can't seem to put behind him the Bush approach of using force where diplomacy would be more appropriate.

And in a last reference to Obama, she said he "wavers" on this matter of meeting with our enemies -- referring to the debate where he said no preconditions but preparations before meetings. And she criticized him for advocating carrying out military operations inside Pakistani territory unilaterally.

From NBC's Ron Allen and Kelly O'Donnell
A police motorcycle officer died after a crash escorting Clinton's motorcade in Dallas today. In a statement afterwards, Clinton called the accident is "devastating" news -- she feels "heart-sick" and expressed her condolences to the family and to the Dallas police department. Clinton placed a call to the chief, and she added that this reminds us of what people in law enforcement do everyday. "We respect their service."

VIDEO: A Dallas police officer was killed in a motor accident while escorting Sen. Hillary Clinton to a campaign rally. NBC's Peter Alexander reports.

Clinton looked profoundly upset by what had happened -- a routine police operation she's probably been part of countless times as first lady, senator and now presidential candidate.

It's also worth noting that at least two officers have died in accidents while working in motorcades for President Bush in the last few years. The incidents occurred in Honolulu and Albuquerque.

As of this writing, the Clinton motorcade is rolling slowly down a highway. We're heading to another event. It's such a contrast to the way motorcades usually race through cities and towns....with crowds catching a glimpse of dignitaries. The press bus is silent. I think everyone is just stunned. Such an unexpected tragedy.

*** UPDATE *** Per NBC's Christina Jamison, what was supposed to be a rally in Fort Worth is now being cut short. Senator Clinton will make brief remarks here in Fort Worth -- she spoke with the Dallas police chief on the drive over here, and then she is going to go visit the officer's family while the traveling press is taken to the airport.

From NBC's Ron Allen
On Romney's plane, the answer to a question that he never fully answered during the recent debate: Romney explained he had at least two big regretts in life. One, never serving in the military; The second, he revealed today, is not having more children. The Romneys have five sons, and now 11 grandchildren. Mrs. Romney was not available to express her feelings about the subject.

And, today, standing with advisor Ron Kaufman by his side, in front of AP reporter Glen Johnson, who in a testy exchange with the governor about lobbyists running his campaign had asked if Kaufman, a known lobbyist was a "potted plant," Romney whipped out an artificial potted plant from behind his back, and said with some glee that he'd choose Kaufman over the green fern-like garden item.

A convoluted moment of humor is how I'd describe it. But frankly, I'm really not sure what just happened. No comment from reporter Johnson, who has tried to avoid discussing the Staples Store encounter over lobbyists "running" Romney's campaign any further.

Taking off for Denver....