The American Spectator

p> TAPE JOBS br> In an attempt to draw a truce with Jesse Jackson , presumptive so-and-so Sen. John Kerry will speak at Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition/PUSH national conference on June 29. Last week, while Al Sharpton was traveling with Kerry on campaign stops, the candidate dropped the Jackson bombshell on Rev. Al. /p>

“He wasn’t happy,” says an adviser to Sharpton. “Obviously Reverend Sharpton doesn’t believe there is a place for Jackson on the Kerry team.”

Sharpton has made that clear enough. But Kerry and some of his advisers have been feeling pressure of late to reach out to Jackson, particularly after Jackson and some of Kerry’s AFL-CIO buddies spent quality time together two weeks ago rallying local labor in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.

“Doing Jackson a favor on behalf of our labor friends is easy enough to do,” says a Kerry adviser in Washington. “Maybe it gives us some breathing room in other decisions, like veep.”

Not likely. Organized labor continues to press its case to Kerry campaign advisers and veep vetter Jim Johnson, that Rep. Dick Gephardt is by far the most acceptable running mate, at least to them. But signs continue to point away from Gephardt, and increasingly toward Sen. John Edwards or perhaps a surprise. On Wednesday, after someone in Kerry’s campaign had leaked news of a meeting between Kerry and Gephardt in Kerry’s Capitol hideaway, some tea-leaf readers were guessing that the leak was an indication that the meeting was for Kerry to inform Gephardt that he was out of the running.

“It’s the guys who you hear about that you usually can start ruling out. But it’s probably still too early for that,” says the Kerry adviser. “No one knows what John is thinking right now. No one except maybe Johnson and [campaign manager Mary Beth] Cahill knows where we are in the process. Maybe they know who is really on the shortlist, but I’d be surprised if they have that good an idea. This has been a frustrating process because so many people know so little.”