US: Senator John Kerry, turned his back on the TV cameras, lowered his voice and confided to a group of union members: "Let me tell you, we've just begun to fight." Conor O'Clery, North America Editor, reports from New York.
Apparently unaware of a radio microphone behind his head, the Democratic front-runner went on: "We're going to keep pounding. These guys are the most crooked, you know, lying group I've ever seen. It's scary."
The comment, made in Chicago to a group of Union members and widely broadcast, is yet another indication of how, with eight months still to go, the US presidential election campaign is turning increasingly negative. The Bush campaign responded that Mr Kerry's remark was part of the most "harsh, angry, bitter rhetoric seen in our country's history". A Kerry spokesman said the Massachusetts senator was not referring to President George Bush personally and that it was the Republicans who had launched "the most personal, crooked, deceitful attacks over the last four years."
Mr Kerry, who easily won four more Democratic Primary contests on Tuesday in Florida, Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana, travelled to Washington yesterday for a meeting with former rival Mr Howard Dean, demonstrating a new spirit of unity in the usually faction-ridden Democratic Party. In advance of the meeting the Bush campaign issued "Howard Dean's Greatest Hits on John Kerry." The list of 10 criticisms of Mr Kerry made by the former Vermont Governor before dropping out of the primary campaign included his assertion that voters could not change America "by nominating somebody who's a Washington insider whose biggest long suit is talk."
Mr Kerry now has 2,135 delegates and later this month could reach the 2,162 necessary to secure the nomination at the July party convention in Boston. Earlier yesterday Republican Senator John McCain opened the door to the possibility of a bipartisan "dream ticket" to defeat President George Bush, but then promptly shut it again. The Republican Senator from Arizona, who fought a bitter primary contest with Mr Bush in 2000, told a morning TV news programme he would consider an offer from Mr Kerry to become his running mate. "John Kerry is a close friend of mine. We have been friends for years. Obviously I would entertain it," Mr McCain said yesterday when asked about the idea. Mr McCain then hastened to add he could not imagine the Democratic Party "seeking a pro-life, free-trading, non-protectionist, deficit hawk." Later his Senate office stated, "Mr McCain will not be a candidate for vice president." The fact that it would be taken seriously however is an embarrassment for the Bush re-election campaign - which is perhaps what Mr McCain intended.
In Ohio yesterday Mr Bush blamed economic setbacks on business scandals and the 9/11 terrorist attacks and accused Mr Kerry indirectly of protectionism. "Their agenda is to increase federal taxes, to build a wall around this country, and to isolate America from the rest of the world," he said.