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Senator Kerry started where he left off in the first debate. He was aggressive with the president, standing and addressing him directly. And President Bush was much better, much more assured, much more presidential. He managed to control his temper and state his arguments more directly and clearly. Polls show that John Kerry's strong performance in the first debate have allowed him to close the gap with President Bush, and the second, more evenly matched, debate will keep the race close going into the last head-to-head next week. President Bush turned in a performance that will reassure and re-energise his...

I saw this in the commentary section and thought it would be fun to post. My favorite is: "Bush looks like a Keebler elf". --I know you have all been waiting breathlessly for this... so here it is- my 12 year-old daughter's spontaneous comments on the debate. She watched the whole thing with us and- all on her own- kept copious notes. "Kerry is a robot. He does not move naturally. He cannot sit right or walk around like a normal human. "Bush is a real person. Moves around a lot. Sits on his stool like he's sitting at home....

With slightly more than a month until the election, the South Dakota race for the U.S. Senate was almost a dead heat, according to an independent statewide poll sponsored by the Rapid City Journal, KOTA-TV and other state media outlets. Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle led Republican challenger John Thune 47.8 percent to 45.5 percent, but Daschle's 2.3 percent lead is well within the poll's 4.5 percent margin of error. Six percent were undecided. Democrat Delphia Williams, 82, of Rapid City and Republican Milt Herrick, 71, of Spearfish were among those polled, but they are not among the undecideds. "I...

(09-25) 09:46 PDT LA CROSSE, Wis. (AP) -- In 2000, political pundits summed up the race in three words: Florida, Florida, Florida. Here's three words to consider this fall: Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota. The trio of upper Mississippi River states narrowly backed Vice President Al Gore in 2000 and are, if anything, slightly more Republican four years later, raising the possibility that Democratic Sen. John Kerry could lose one or two of them. President Bush is targeting their combined 27 electoral votes -- the same total as Florida, where a bitterly contested recount settled the last election. "They are states...

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon released 10 pages of records from President Bush's Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard late Friday, but the files shed no new light on his military career. The records include several that have been released before and others that are administrative files or cover letters to other documents that have been previously released. The Defense Department released the records in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by The Associated Press. Friday was the court-ordered deadline for the Pentagon to turn over all records it could find on Bush's Texas Air National Guard...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - In an enormous blow to its credibility, CBS News on Monday said it had been misled over the authenticity of documents it aired in a story challenging President Bush (news - web sites)'s military service. "Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in a report," CBS News said in a statement. "We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret," the network said, adding that it had launched an internal investigation of...

CBS News planned Monday to issue a statement about documents purporting to show President Bush neglected some duties when he was in the National Guard more than 30 years ago. The authenticity of the documents — four memoranda attributed to one of Mr. Bush's Guard commanders, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian — has been under fire since they were described in a Sept. 8 broadcast of 60 Minutes. According to The Washington Post, the network plans to say it was misled about the authenticity of the documents. The New York Times reports that CBS News officials met Sunday evening with anchor...

Several weeks ago, our InsiderAdvantage national presidential survey showed George W. Bush retaking the lead in the race for president. Now it appears that Bush has enjoyed far more of a "bump" in support from the Republican convention than Sen. John Kerry did from the Democratic convention. With less than two months until Election Day, the race boils down to two or three critical events. Perhaps foremost will be the articulated messages and the voter turnouts in Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio. There are other "battleground" states, for sure. But most experts, including Bush's own campaign manager, now acknowledge that the...

Col William Campenni analyses the memos. From Special Report with Brit Hume, September 10, 2004: JIM ANGLE [FOX NEWS]: The memos that CBS broadcast about the National Guard service of a young George W Bush have caused a controversy of their own. There is widespread suspicion that the documents CBS used are not authentic. One of the people who holds that view and has some doubts is Retired Col Bill Campenni, who served with George Bush in Texas, and he joins us now. Thank you sir, appreciate your joining us. COL WILLIAM CAMPENNI: Thank you. ANGLE: Let's talk about the...

THERE'S no love lost between Kevin Phillips, author of "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush," and the administration of George W. Bush. But the former White House staffer and economist was overheard at Litchfield's West Street Grill saying with a sense of resignation about John Kerry's chances of beating the president, "It's a lost cause. It's all over."

John Kerry had it all worked out. A decorated war hero against a Texan gunslinger who had bungled the first war he had chosen to fight. A year ago, John Kerry was dreaming of a presidential debate in which George Bush wilted under Mr Kerry's encyclopaedic knowledge of the world. But the Yale frat boys have given him a severe awakening. Like Al Gore, John Kerry appears to have badly underestimated George Bush's raw talent for the campaign fight. John Kerry was lulled into making Vietnam the centrepiece of his character, only to find himself running for cover under withering...

Email to Katherine Lopez: PA. FOR W. [KJL] I am a northeast Pennsylvania resident who also happens to work up the road from the stadium where Bush made his first post-convention appearance. As expected, security was tight, traffic was a nightmare, and those of us who had to work had to find ways to get around it. To make it possible I left for work at 5 am this morning. Since we're a bank operations center, I just didn't have the option of saying "another day, time to play hooky." Groggy and tired, I arrived at the location at 5:45...

General Election Cattle Call, September 4 Posted by Chris Bowers (Previous Numbers in Parenthesis) National Popular Vote Projection Bush: 50.30 (47.98) Kerry: 47.70 (50.02) Status: Toss-up Electoral College Projection Bush: 284, 194 solid (252, 161) Kerry: 254, 169 solid (286, 210) States Changing Hands from 2000: WI to Bush States Projected Under Three Points: AR, FL, NV and WI for Bush (48); IA, ME CD-1, MN, NH and NM for Kerry (27) On the strength of a very real convention bounce, Bush has retaken the lead. In fact, this is his second largest lead in the national vote projection ever....

NANTUCKET, Mass. - (KRT) - Forget the economy, it may just be the personality, stupid. Swing voters don't like Sen. John Kerry much, one recent poll suggests, and that's just the latest survey pointing to a stubborn "personality gap" he suffers versus President Bush. Some political analysts think simple likability is the Democratic nominee's greatest challenge as the presidential campaign enters its two-month stretch run. This phenomenon persists even though virtually every poll shows that a solid majority disapproves of Bush's handling of the Iraq war and the economy. Most voters also think the country is headed in the wrong...

We smell sequel. Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ sold a whopping 4.1 million copies on DVD and VHS in its first day on store shelves, according to Fox Home Entertainment. The God, guts and gore movie went on sale Tuesday morning. By midday, it had moved 2.4 million copies--exceeding Fox's projections by 20 percent. The 4.1 million is impressive, especially for an R-rated film; Finding Nemo remains the one-day DVD sales record holder with about 8 million. Nevertheless, the boffo numbers prompted the editor in chief of the monthly trade magazine DVD Exclusive, Scott Hettrick, to quip to...

Does Te-ray-zuh have a dog? If she does -- and it got anywhere near her husband last week -- it must have been growling. Dogs do that when they smell fear, and for the past week Mr. Kerry has fairly reeked of it. Panic was palpable in the Dems' camp last week. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are omnipresent. On television, radio and in the book Unfit for Command, the Swiftees are attacking Kerry's war record relentlessly, and in a level of detail that Mr. Kerry should be answering in kind, if he had answers. The Swiftees have done...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush on Saturday described John Kerry's tour of duty in Vietnam as more heroic than his own service in the Air National Guard, saying his Democratic rival had been "in harm's way." But the president told NBC's "Today" show that both sides should drop the debate over their wartime service, saying, "I think that we ought to move beyond the past. ... The real question is who best to lead us forward." Asked if he believed that he and Kerry "served on the same level of heroism," Bush replied, "No, I don't. I think him going...

Four years ago, George W Bush won the state of Missouri by just three percentage points. In virtually the geographical centre of the United States, Missouri is once again a swing state. So on the eve of the Republican Party's Convention, I went to Missouri to see how the president's support is holding up in this must-win state. To fly into Kansas City, Missouri, is to arrive in one of the most hotly contested areas in this vast country. In election 2000, just one vote separated the two parties out of 80,000 cast in this northwestern corner of Missouri known...

Republican Party officials planning the presidential nominating convention in New York expressed surprise that most new polls now show President Bush ahead of Sen. John Kerry. "August was supposed to be Kerry's," one official told the US News Bulletin, referring to the post-Democratic Convention period when the Massachusetts senator was expected to build on his convention bounce and surge ahead of Bush. Bush officials said the poll lead is also surprising considering the millions of dollars of TV ads that Democratic 527 groups have poured into the 19 battleground states – ads which voters say are very effective. But Republican...

August 11, 2004 Release of: Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates 703-684-4510 “Swift Boat “controversy” gets Voters’ attention and nicks Kerry” ALEXANDRIA, VA – Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates (FMA), a Republican polling and strategic consulting firm based in Alexandria, VA, has just completed their second likely voter survey with interviews conducted ONLY in the 19 battleground states. The battleground states are defined as those in which the Bush and Kerry campaigns have been focusing their paid media efforts throughout the campaign. Nearly 6 in 10 likely voters claim that they that they recently saw, read or heard something about the TV ad...