Kerry Raises $50 Million, Bush Tops It
By SHARON THEIMER, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - John Kerry (news - web sites) became the first Democratic hopeful to raise $50 million over three months while President Bush (news - web sites) set a record by topping that, officials said Friday.
The Kerry campaign announced that it raised more than half its money online from January through March, about $26.7 million, the most ever taken in by a presidential campaign over the Internet in one quarter.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=694&ncid=703&e=2&u=/ap/20040402/ap_o
n_el_pr/presidential_money
Bigger than what was initially reported. Great news. I think we should not worry about whether Bush will define Kerry before Kerry can define himself. The fact is that the attention span of the American people is short. Bush's ads are effective in the short term, but when Kerry hosts up his biography in numerous positive ads as he did in the primary and at the same time takes steady aim at the Bush record on economy/jobs/healthcare and WMD for weeks in May/June/July, I expect the tide to turn fully in his favor.
Then the double poll bounce for Kerry. In May, we will have the VP announcement and the related pre- and post-announcement hoopla (particularly if it is media darling John Edwards), and then at the end of July we will have the Dem convention where Kerry will have to knock that speech out of the park.
I predict that we will look back at Kerry's decision to opt out in December as the moment when he won the election (thanks Howard).