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Politics : John Kerry for President Free speach thread NON-CENSORED -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (487)	11/4/2004 7:27:27 AM
From: GROUND ZERO™	Respond to of 1449

What did kerry say about the exit polls taken in the afternoon showing him in the lead before the actual results came out that night? He said, "You know, I actually won the election before I lost it." GZ

To: geode00 who wrote (487)	11/4/2004 4:59:24 PM
From: StockDung	Respond to of 1449

Why the long face Senator suffered an illusion of victory BY HELEN KENNEDY DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU BOSTON - For months, John Kerry strode onto stages to the driving beat of Bruce Springsteen's "No Surrender." Yesterday, he had no choice. An Election Day that had started with Kerry and his entire staff convinced he was the new leader of the free world turned into a long anxious night and a morning of tough decisions, culminating in Kerry's four-minute call to President Bush and the dashing of his political dreams. "I absolutely was convinced that John Kerry had been elected President of the United States," said top campaign strategist Bob Shrum. "It sort of slid away slowly through the course of the evening." Throughout the day yesterday, Kerry, who often says that "every day is extra" after Vietnam, was calm as his wife, daughters and staff shed some tears. "He's actually sustaining all of us," Shrum said. "This is rough now, really hard. He's one of my best friends," he said, choking up a little. "But this is a guy that's been through things that are a lot tougher." When Kerry hoisted his mug of dark ale during his traditional Election Day lunch at the Union Oyster House in Boston, it was a celebration. Final internal surveys in the battleground states had the senator up and the campaign's momentum in the last days was palpable. Then came exit polling that indicated Kerry would win all - not just some - of the key states. Giddy aides started to bandy about the words "landslide" and "transition." After spending four hours at Boston's Westin Hotel doing 38 satellite TV interviews, Kerry was ebullient on the ride home to his 12-room townhouse in Louisburg Square, said campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill. He had a convivial dinner with his wife, Teresa, and daughters, Alexandra and Vanessa. Then the polls started closing and everything began to fall apart. "I got a sinking feeling when the returns started to come in and the states got redder and redder," Shrum said. "The exit polls were completely wrong." "It became clear in the course of the evening that Florida was tightening," Cahill said. "I went back to the 'boiler room' at the Westin." Cahill, Shrum and the other leaders of Kerry's campaign held increasingly urgent meetings, keeping in touch with Kerry and the headquarters in Washington through conference calls. "As Florida was called for President Bush, all attention moved to Ohio," Cahill said. The word from Columbus: There might be as many as 250,000 votes still to be counted, less than Bush's margin. "We thought at that point in time we had a very good chance of winning the raw vote total," Cahill said. "Then we called Sen. [John] Edwards and he went out and made a statement." Edwards, who was said to be vehemently against conceding too quickly, told a crowd gathered in Boston's Copley Place that the election was not over before all votes could be counted. At that point, Kerry went to bed. His staff kept watch as the situation grew more and more dire and the certainty of loss became more and more clear. "You could smell it in the middle of the night, but you had to see the real vote count," Shrum said. At 4 a.m., campaign spokesman Joe Lockhart and Kerry confidant Joel Johnson started swapping stories about past races won and lost. "Been here before," Lockhart said. "I grew up in my 20s going through races like this." Kerry awoke at 7 a.m. to the news that the number of uncounted provisional ballots in Ohio was about the same as his margin of loss. He could not make up the difference unless every single one of those ballots were cast for him. In a conference call, Kerry listened as the lawyers in Columbus urged him to fight by challenging the "skewed" counting system for provisional ballots. "Our lawyers argued very strongly that we had the basis for litigation and we ought to enter the court at 8 a.m.," Cahill said. "He instantly made the determination that he did not want to put the country through any lengthy litigation." After talking to Edwards, Kerry cleared the room so he could call Bush in private. Afterward, he told Shrum, "We had a very nice conversation." For the superstitious senator, there had been a bad omen. For months, Kerry carried around a lucky buckeye - a type of chestnut that is the symbol of Ohio - in his right jacket pocket. In the wee hours of Election Day, Kerry touched down in Toledo and reached for the talisman to show the crowd greeting him at the airport. The buckeye fell to the stage, slipping from his eager fingers. Twenty-four hours later, so would the state that held all his hopes. Originally published on November 4, 2004