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Kerry upbeat after debate


Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry poses with a supporter Sunday while visiting Austintown, Ohio.
GERALD HERBERT/Associated Press

By SCOTT SHEPARD
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 10/03/04

AUSTINTOWN, Ohio — Democrats aren't quite ready to reprise the old FDR standard, "Happy Days Are Here Again," but John Kerry's debate performance and his bounce in the polls has many of them in an upbeat mood for the first time in weeks. They have turned out by the thousands at campaign rallies since Kerry debated President Bush last week. Moreover, they are visiting Democratic Web sites by the tens of thousands volunteering to help the campaign.

And Saturday night, in Washington, amid reports that polls show Kerry having erased the double-digit lead Bush has had since Labor Day, they opened their pocketbooks, donating $6 million at a fund-raiser the nominee attended.

"Something good is happening, whatever it is," Kerry told an audience Sunday in this northeast Ohio community, his first stop in a full day of campaign events that included attending a late afternoon church fellowship service in Cleveland with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and an evening rally in New Hampshire.

Bush allies downplayed the apparent effects of the debate performance.

"We anticipated that [Kerry] would be a good debater," Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie said Sunday on CNN. "But the president is someone who says what he means and means what he says. And when it comes to credibility and policies, that's what decides elections."

Bush had no campaign events scheduled Sunday.

Jennifer Palmieri, who is coordinating the Kerry campaign in Ohio, said volunteer canvassers are being met with much more positive responses about Kerry from undecided voters than they were before the debate.

Palmieri also said the enthusiasm among committed Democrats has grown since the debate in Miami, one that Kerry won handily, according to post-debate polls by Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times.

Newsweek reported that the first of the three debates between Kerry and Bush had "erased the lead" Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have held over Kerry and running mate John Edwards since the Republican National Convention in New York.

Newsweek's post-convention poll had Bush leading among registered voters 54 percent to 43 percent. The post-debate polls had 47 percent choosing Kerry-Edwards, and 45 percent for Bush-Cheney. Two percent said they would vote for Ralph Nader and his running mate Peter Camejo.

Sixty-one percent of those polled by Newsweek told the magazine that Kerry won the debate, while 19 percent declared Bush the winner and 16 percent were undecided.

Likewise, the Times poll found 54 percent who felt Kerry had won, compared with 15 percent who said Bush won.

© 2004 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (emphasis added)

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/election/1004nation/04kerry.html