Longtime Democratic strategist Pat Caddell said Friday that if documents aired by CBS newsman Dan Rather Wednesday night turn out to be forged, as alleged by experts, the presidential race "is over.""It would be the end of the race," Caddell told Fox News Live. "It would be the end of the race," he repeated.
"[Democratic officials are] so involved in this," the former Carter pollster worried. "They have gotten themselves so involved in this issue [in] the last 24 hours that somebody's going to, if they're not authentic, they're going to be blamed for it. It's incredible to me that they've gotten in this."
Caddell said he wasn't trying to sensationalize the issue, explaining that instead "I'm trying to save my party, you know, by telling the truth."
He said that forfeiting the presidential race would be the least of his party's problems if Democrats are tied to any forgery scandal.
"The race is over – and we've got bigger problems than that," he warned.
In order for it to really be "over", some if not all of our mainstream media organs...I'm talking Time, Newsweek, CNN, The N.Y. Times... are going to have to summon the journalistic integrity to report the truth on the document forgeries, and dig into the possibility of any ties to the Kerry campaign, instead of burying the story on the back pages or trafficking in Karl Rove conspiracy theories.
Rival ABC News has been leading the way:
HODGES SAID HE WAS MISLED BY CBS: Retired Maj. General Hodges, Killian's supervisor at the Grd, tells ABC News that he feels CBS misled him about the documents they uncovered. According to Hodges, CBS told him the documents were "handwritten" and after CBS read him excerpts he said, "well if he wrote them that's what he felt."# Hodges also said he did not see the documents in the 70's and he cannot authenticate the documents or the contents. His personal belief is that the documents have been "computer generated" and are a "fraud".