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Democrats Hold Tepid Debate

Aired January 23, 2004 - 13:09   ET

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

KYRA PHILLIPS, ANCHOR: Four days before the nation's first presidential primary, the top two Democratic contenders are moving in the polls in opposite directions.
The CNN/"USA Today"/Gallup tracking poll shows Kerry widening his lead over Howard Dean 34 percent to 22 percent. The same poll yesterday gave Dean 30 percent to Dean's 25.

Wesley Clark remains in third place, now with 17 percent. John Edwards is in fourth.

Up, down, or in between, the candidates are coming off their last preprimary debate with a Granite State blitz. CNN's Bob Franken is watching them all.

And you know, Bob is always one to give his opinion. So we're going to get right down to it.

Well, talking to that debate, Bob, what do you think: basically laborious questions or was it riveting television?

BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, if you were using your 3D glasses, you would see that absolutely nothing was really going on in that debate. It was on purpose. The candidates all decided that the one thing they did not want to do was to make a mistake.

Howard Dean, of course, has had his fill of mistakes. He tried a little self-deprecation to try and recover from that. But that was nothing compared to the warm and fuzzy interview he did with his wife later on ABC.

John Kerry just wanted to stay out of trouble. The comments were all the same. And if this was do or die, this is a campaign that is dying a slow death.

But of course, that's not the truth. The fact is that there's an awful lot of time left. In politics this is a tremendous amount of time between now and Tuesday. As we learned in Iowa, today's numbers may be just a whole different ball game tomorrow.

PHILLIPS: Bob, you look at those close-ups -- we're looking at Wesley Clark now. But specifically of Howard Dean, it just seemed like he was gritting his teeth through this whole thing.

FRANKEN: Yes. This was a person who has come as far as he has by being the candidate of all those who are not necessarily disenfranchised but disenchanted with the U.S. political system. But those very same people have made it very clear that there are limitations.

And now he wants to try and mellow down a little bit and put on that facade.

The thing about politics is, you have to really hide to some degree what you're feeling. But oftentimes, what you're feeling is not the kind of thing that appeals to voters.

PHILLIPS: Well, talk about mellowing down. Wesley Clark, when thrown the question from Peter Jennings about Michael Moore, that sort of caught him off-guard, yes?

FRANKEN: Well, what we learned is that Wesley Clark is not a great ad-libber. This was a question that came from left field. Actually, it probably -- people would say right field, and it is an absolute certainty that, if I can torture this baseball analogy, Wes Clark did not hit a home run.

PHILLIPS: Our Bob Franken, covering all the debates. We'll continue to check in with you. Thanks, Bob.

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