Laura Rauch, Associated Press Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., was eager to take the stage during a campaign stop Friday in Bellville, Ohio. Click photo for larger image. More on Campaign 2004 Bush 'not passing ball' Graphic: Election 2004 / The money race President Bush, in W. Va., pushes bid for flat tax Catholic Bishops discuss integrity, permissible election activities More pictures from the campaign trail

In the darkest days of Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry's primary campaign, when the once-anointed frontrunner was trailing by as much as 20 percentage points in key states, Kerry advisers and some former opponents warned pundits not to count him out. They argued he was at his best when he had been backed into a corner, that he was a great "closer."

Slowly but nimbly, Kerry regained his footing, winning the Iowa caucuses and eventually easing into the victory stretch.

The Massachusetts senator is not quite back at that same dark place, but with less than 60 days before Election Day, advisers on both campaigns concede that President Bush has emerged from a well-orchestrated Republican convention with considerable momentum. The Kerry team nevertheless remains confident it can turn back the president's gain by playing tougher offense and shifting the debate back to domestic issues, such as job losses and rising health care costs.

After a week in which Kerry's record was ridiculed by one convention speaker after another in New York, and a month in which his valor as a young lieutenant in Vietnam was repeatedly questioned by a Republican-leaning outside group, polls by Time and Newsweek magazines this weekend showed Bush suddenly leading Kerry by more than 10 percentage points.

This is the first time all year that either candidate has broken out of stalemate, and the weekend polls immediately punctured the Kerry campaign's contention at the end of July that they hadn't seen a post-convention bounce simply because so few voters remain undecided this year.

Kerry nonetheless headed back out on the hustings with a decidedly feisty tone Thursday night as the Republican convention drew to a close. At a late night rally in Springfield, Ohio, and rallies across the Buckeye state that followed, Kerry defended his record on national defense and hammered Bush for "misleading" the nation on Iraq and with his promises to pursue compassionate conservative policies.

"We're going to be on the attack," said Kerry spokesman David Wade, who was with Kerry in Pittsburgh yesterday where the candidate was taking the day off to spend time with his daughter Alexandra, who was celebrating her birthday.

"They had four days of a convention where in between lies and negativity, moderates were the voice of the Republican Party. We're going to make it very clear that for the past four years [House Majority Leader] Tom Delay and [Chief White House Political Adviser] Karl Rove have been the masterminds of the Republican Party and taken America too far to the right, hurting the middle class with bad policies."

Kerry campaign aides say in the coming weeks they will move the debate squarely back to the net loss in jobs since 2000 and their central line of argument that Bush's tax cuts, environmental policies and health care legislation have predominantly benefited wealthy Americans and Republican-leaning corporations.

With many Democrats outside the Kerry term urging the candidate to take steps to reinvigorate his campaign, Kerry has moved John Sasso, a longtime adviser and Boston operative who once ran the presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis, from the Democratic National Committee to a top spot inside his campaign.

Sasso will be a senior adviser traveling with Kerry through Nov. 2. Replacing him as liaison to the DNC will be Michael Whouley, who helped Kerry win the Iowa caucuses.

The changes put three Boston operatives in charge of his campaign: campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, Sasso and Whouley.

In recent days, Kerry has increasingly used the phrase "misleader" to describe Bush in his campaign speeches and has aggressively challenged the Bush campaign's assertion that the Massachusetts senator is a "flip-flopper" by highlighting the Bush administration's shifting positions on steel tariffs, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

Kerry's aides said their offensive in coming weeks will include a concerted effort to separate America's efforts to hunt down the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks from the Bush administration's decision to go into the war in Iraq, which the Republicans tied neatly into one package at their convention last week.

Yesterday, for example, the Kerry campaign seized on assertions by Florida Sen. Bob Graham, a Democrat and former co-chair of the joint House-Senate panel investigating Sept. 11, in his new book "Intelligence Matters" (excerpted in Newsweek) that military resources specifically suited to hunting for bin Laden were diverted to Iraq. The Kerry team also plans to drive home the link between spending in Iraq and record deficits that have pinched spending on education and other programs at home.

"We are going to hold them accountable for their record, which has been bad for Americans, and we are going to hold them accountable for the way they have misled the country," Wade said.

One of the greatest challenges the Kerry campaign will face from outside groups is the continued presence of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which has been running ads criticizing Kerry for speaking out against the Vietnam War and contending that his heroism in Vietnam has been exaggerated.

The Kerry campaign did not immediately hit back against the ads, which have been running in swing states like Pennsylvania and on cable news channels such as CNN.

Many Democrats say that was a strategic mistake. Some aides inside the campaign have conceded the point but say they never expected the group's largely unsubstantiated accounts of Kerry's wartime service to gain the kind of news coverage they did on cable news shows. The Kerry campaign is now refuting the charges more openly.

Rove has cast Kerry's anti-war activities after he returned from the war as fair game, and the Swift boat veterans are now running ads criticizing those activities as near-treason. This time, the Kerry campaign quickly began countering those attacks by playing up Kerry's "courage in speaking out" and taking swipes at Bush's National Guard service during Vietnam.

Aiding the effort to defeat Bush -- although legally barred from coordinating its activities with the campaign -- will be the Democratic National Committee and independent "527" groups that have raised more than $100 million dollars to castigate Bush for everything from rising gas prices to his erroneous statements that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Members of the Democratic National Committee said their ads would focus on a 4-pronged attack: that Bush misled the American people,weakened America in the world, has a failed record on domestic issues and that his policies have always favored special interests over the middle class. The 527s and the DNC may end up being Kerry's first line of defense against the personal attacks on his military record and anti-war activities.