Buck Staudt spoke to ABC News about the sugar-coating allegations:
“I never pressured anybody about George Bush because I had no reason to,” Staudt told ABC News in his first interview since the documents were made public.
So there you have it, the Rathergate story is both fake and false.
Meanwhile, Bush’s lead in the Gallup Poll is up to 13 points:
Now, in the new poll, the figures show Bush with a 13-point lead over Kerry among likely voters and an 8-point lead among registered voters. Both sets of figures represent significant increases in Bush’s standing in the race since just before the beginning of the Republican convention in late August, when likely voters chose Bush over Kerry by a slight three-point margin (50% to 47%), and registered voters leaned toward Kerry by an even smaller margin of one point (48% to 47%).
Well, Dems, there’s always 2008.
It really is better to hold back. Turns out indeed, Gallup overamples Republicans.
Atrios has a good post on why this race is either a dead heat or a landslide for Kerry. I still think it’s the latter.
BTW, Kevin Phillips’ book on Bush is pretty devastating. Nobody who earns a salary should vote for Bush based on his book. Do some opp research. It might help you.
Congratulations for faithfully regurgitating the DNC talking points that can be found in all the standard locations: Daily Kos, Atrios, Oliver Willis, etc. Gallup, Time, and Newsweek start with a random sample. If it turns out that this sample turns up more Reps than Dems, that’s because there are more Reps than Dems in existence.
After contacting this random sample, they then apply a “likely voter” screen based on a number of factors, including party affiliation. The DNC talking points may very well apply to the “likely voter” profile, but not to the random sample. See Kausfiles for a more sensible interpretation of the discrepancy between the Bush-leaning polls and the split polls. There are no polls showing Kerry with any kind of a lead any more.
Bottom line: Kerry has given the voters no reason to give him their support, none at all, and his Memogate dirty tricks have backfired on him.
CBS/Rather memogate has no links to Kerry, unlike SwiftBoats do to Bush. Stop playing like there is a connection.