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CNN LIVE AT DAYBREAK

Democrats on the Attack With Bush Bashing

Aired June 23, 2003 - 06:35   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: The gloves are off. Democrats eager to be heard are attacking President Bush on every front.
Our Jonathan Karl gives us a front-row seat.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ladies and gentlemen, our candidates.

JONATHAN KARL, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's become conventional wisdom in some circles to say Democrats are afraid to aggressively take on the popular president. Not so.

REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We are led today, run today by a radical, extreme administration that has sold your government to the special interests of this country.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This administration's idea of diversity is to have a whole bunch of different oil executives from different companies running the government.

KARL: Brought together by Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Push Coalition in Chicago, these Democrats sought to outdo one another in the ferocity of their attacks on the president on issues ranging from the alleged abuse of civil liberties in the war on terror...

SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Unacceptable! Un-American!

KARL: ... to education...

GEPHARDT: No child left behind, it's a fraud. It's a phony gimmick.

KARL: ... to the president's policy on AIDS in Africa.

HOWARD DEAN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The president's program to deal with HIV/AIDS in Africa is a fraud.

KARL: The issue that seemed to fire up this crowd of liberal activists was the administration's failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

REV. AL SHARPTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If Bill Clinton had told the lie that George Bush told, he'd have been impeached for saying that. REP. DENNIS KUCINICH (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And lying to the American people is a weapon of mass destruction, Mr. Bush!

KARL: And it's not just the long-shot, more left-wing candidates taking on the president on foreign policy and national security. Witness Dick Gephardt, who supported the Iraq war, taking on the Bush administration over North Korea.

GEPHARDT: This is breathtaking ineptitude, and we are now in more danger tonight than we've ever been.

KARL: If there was ever a reluctance to vigorously attack the president it is gone.

REV. JESSE JACKSON, RAINBOW PUSH COALITION: And I think these candidates are beginning to get a sharper message that's going to show contrast.

KARL: Presidential forums like this are happening about weekly now and look like Democratic auditions for the role of the best person to take on the president.

(on camera): For now, Democratic candidates are attacking President Bush and for the most part leaving each other alone. It's a tenuous truce that nobody expects to last long. After all, only one of them will get a chance to run against the president.

Jonathan Karl, CNN, Chicago.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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