Source: Kerry decides against 2008 presidential run

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http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01/...008/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, won't make a second bid for the White House, sources familiar with Kerry's thinking said Wednesday.

A source close to Kerry and a Democratic operative who worked for him in 2004 said the four-term senator has decided to sit out the 2008 race, which already has drawn more than a dozen contenders from both parties.

Kerry made that decision within the past day and was expected to announce it later Wednesday, the source said.

A Democratic operative who worked for Kerry in the presidential race said that the senator "came to the realization a lot of people want something new."

The operative said people close to Kerry advised him that fundraising would be tougher and that many party activists who supported him the last time were signing up with other candidates.

"You have to think hard about whether you hurt yourself" by running again, the Democrat said.

In the 2004 race, Kerry trailed President Bush in the popular vote 51 percent to 48 percent and lost in the Electoral College 286-252.

Since the loss, Kerry has struggled to gain support within the Democratic Party for another nomination.

In the latest CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll, 5 percent of Democrats said Kerry was their top choice for the 2008 nomination, and a little more than half -- 51 percent -- did not want him to be the 2008 nominee.

Kerry trailed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who led the field of Democratic preferences with 34 percent; Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, with 18 percent; his 2004 running mate, former Sen. John Edwards, who got 15 percent; and former Vice President Al Gore, the party's 2000 presidential nominee, with 10 percent.

The telephone poll was conducted Friday through Sunday and involved 467 registered voters who describe themselves as Democrats or independents who lean to the Democratic Party.

The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

Kerry was a decorated Navy officer in the Vietnam War who became a prominent critic of the conflict, famously asking a Senate committee in 1971, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

He voted for the congressional resolution authorizing the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but he now opposes the war. Critics mocked him as a "flip-flopper" during his campaign against Bush.