After all, why wouldn't they? She sends American jobs overseas with regularity. Year after year, Carly Fiorina sent jobs from HP's American facilities to new facilities in low wage countries. Oh, and then she was fired for being one of the worst CEO's in history.
So, now she's running around the state complaining about the high unemployment rate. And even setting up a website calling Boxer the Failed Senator.
Well, Karl Rove did always say attack at your weekness, and guess what, failure is Carly Fiorina's persistent weakness. She failed at HP, and then was shoved out the door, and now she wants to bring all that failure with her to DC. And remove what was left of the middle class in California and the nation.
Remind me again why she is qualified for this job?
Carly Fiorina has lots of issues with President Obama. She's a Mama Grizzly after all, and they are protecting their ... ummm ... "nation" from the dangers of health care for all. You know, the really dangerous stuff.
Dangerous stuff like the possibility of a mosque several blocks down the road from Ground Zero, the site of the World Trade Center. Now, I understand the importance of honoring the tragedy of the events of 9/11, but are we to blame a whole religion for the actions of a few crazy zealots? The twisted and violent death cult that the 9/11 bombers are engaged in is not the religion that is practiced by the millions of American Muslims that are actively engaged in our civic life. Sam Seder goes ahead and makes a complete mockery of the whole "controversy" in the video to the right.
Real credit should be given to President Obama for his statement on the matter:
As a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.
Now, it appears, Carly thinks that the President of the United States shouldn't get involved in issues of the (ahem) United States.
Two days after President Obama waded into the controversy over plans to build a mosque near ground zero in New York City, Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina said it was an "intensely personal and local issue," adding that she didn't think "it's helpful when the president of the United States weighs in." (LA Times)
Of course, the Mayor of New York City applauded the President's comments, but you know, those aren't the locals that Fiorina likes. The ones that agree with the Big Mama Grizzly herself. Apparently it is ok when Big Grizz Palin chimes in to bring the issue to the nation's attention by attacking it:
"Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand. Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in the interest of healing," the former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate tweeted on Sunday. (ABC)
Note that Palin's comments were made back in July, and she's been keeping it up, especially since the President made his comments last week. So, in summary, the comments of a half-term Alaska governor, completely appropriate. The President of the United States speaking out with the support of the Mayor of New York? "unhelpful."
But, truth be told, this is the former CEO who made the current sexually harassing, employee morale devestating CEO of HP Mark Hurd look like a darn right treat. But, you know, it's not easy to climb to the hop of the heap of worst CEOs. So, what can you expect really. Certainly somebody with this kind of track record is somebody who should be speaking out on what is "helpful" in other jurisdictions.
Carly Fiorina. She was against unemployment benefits before she was for them. Not to buy-in to the right wing ridiculousness surrounding John Kerry, but Carly Fiorina, it seems, has had a change of heart. During the primary, she couldn't find enough ways to say that she was a conservative that would stand up for all the crazy that is the California GOP electorate. Even going so far as to say that she supported Sen. McConnell's position of prioritizing political gamesmanship over ensuring that millions of Americans had the ability to pay rent and eat next week.
or several weeks, Fiorina had said she supported extending the jobless benefits, but not without spending cuts to balance the bill's $33.9-billion cost. Speaking Tuesday morning on KGO-AM (810), Fiorina shifted her position, supporting the extension even though Congress has not specified spending cuts to offset it.
"I probably would vote for this extension, but I'll tell you what, I think it is absolutely appropriate for people to stand on their desks and say, 'When is it that we're finally going to do what needs to be done and cut government spending?' " Fiorina said. (LA Times)
But, you know, Carly reads polls. And she knows this issue is not a winner here in California. So, she'll hop scoot and jump towards the middle. But the fact is, that once she lodges herself in the Senate, you can bet your last dollar that when push comes to shove, she'll be right there with McConnell and James Inhofe.
Sometimes I have to go looking for something to write for a blog post. At other times, something just comes and smacks you in the face. And such is the case with a recent quote in the Matier and Ross column regarding Carly Fiorina's two yachts:
Fiorina spokeswoman Julie Soderlund said it makes sense for the Fiorinas to be a two-yacht family, given that the boat-loving couple have divided their time between California and D.C., near where their grandchildren live.(SF Chronicle)
Oh, and Soderlund continued by pointing out that Boxer is also wealthy (true), kind of a nanny-nanny-boo-boo sort of thing. The reason the Boxer campaign is pointing out that Fiorina is wealthy isn't for some sort of anti-rich class warfare, but rather to contrast her policies with her standing. In other words, the policies that she wants to pursue will increase the divide between rich and poor.
To point some of the obvious concerns, she wants to decrease tax rates for the wealthiest Americans (of which she counts herself as), and take a whack at social security in the name of "deficit reduction." See, that's all the rage on the Right. As Americans struggle to find employment, Fiorina is fighting to put us back into a recession. Meanwhile, a strong majority of Americans favor increasing taxes on millionaires and charging the social security tax to the rich. So, yes, the fact that these policies will strongly benefit her are worth noting.
But, if she happens to lose this round, she can always comfort herself with a nice hot chocolate on board one of her two yachts.
Field is out with their Senate polling data, and Barbara Boxer maintains a narrow lead over Carly Fiorina, 47-44.The number is an actually an improvement for Boxer over the March 2010 numbers, when Boxer's lead was just a single point. In the end, both of these numbers are within the margin of error. All that is to say that we should be expecting a fight for the Senate race this fall.
Whereas Jerry Brown has failed to capture the hearts of some traditional Democratic demographics, Boxer has built on these constituencies. She leads the 18-39 demographic by a 52-33 tally, and Latinos by 55-32. While turnout will be critical to who wins both elections, Fiorina (and Whitman) need to make serious dents in both areas of support if they are to win their respective elections.
On the flip side, Boxer probably needs to consolidate Democrats a little bit, as it appears that Fiorina has mostly done that on her side of the divide. But, as the favorability numbers, Boxer is a more polarizing figure. Her favorability numbers are under water at 11 (4152). Meanwhile, unlike Whitman who has bought her way into universal recognition, Fiorina is still something of an unknown quantity. She's at +5,(34-29), but the largest group is "no opinion."
The task for the Boxer Team (and allies) is to fill in those blanks. The story doesn't even take any aggrandizing. Fiorina is a failed CEO, who was fired by HP for both poor morale, spying on her employees and journalists, and poor performance. Oh, and she was even named the 19th worst CEO in America. Sadly, she was out-terribled by Lehman's Dick Fuld. Her failed record is not even that much of a mixed bag, she rose to the level of her incompetence, and boy, was she incompetent.
More from Robert: Boxer's numbers aren't as strong as we'd like. Her disapproval rating among likely voters is 48%, with 42% approval. What explains this?
The San Francisco Chronicle article on this poll suggests Boxer is suffering from the public's overall anger at Washington DC:
One of Boxer's more vexing problems, analysts say, is that opposition to her is not just about her. She has become an avatar for broader voter frustrations about the struggling economy, President Obama and the growth of the federal government.
"It's a reflection of the effectiveness of a Republican strategy to characterize Sen. Boxer as everything that's wrong with the government," said Larry Berman, a professor of political science at UC Davis. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., another longtime Democrat facing a tough re-election challenge, faces a similar predicament, Berman said.
When the economy is struggling, DiCamillo said, "the voters tend to take it out on the incumbents."
This makes sense to me. We have seen the Obama Administration fail to bring change to this country. Their two accomplishments, the stimulus and health care, were watered down to the point where voters don't see them as being effective, although Boxer is rightly going out there and showing that the stimulus did indeed create jobs - and that we need more of it.
But with Democratic Senators like Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln doing all they can do to destroy the Democratic majority, and with the White House failing to provide strong leadership to challenge this or to achieve progressive ends, Democratic voters are losing confidence and enthusiasm, and other voters are starting to grow uneasy about incumbents as a whole.
Boxer is therefore suffering that collateral damage, even though she has been one of the best, most progressive Democrats we have. However, she is in a stronger position than these toplines suggest.
Fiorina hasn't gained any support over her March 2010 numbers, and Boxer is down 2 but that is within the margin of error. Independent voters are still with Boxer, 47-39. Boxer, unlike Brown, also retains strong backing from core Democratic constituencies: she leads 52-33 among voters under age 39, and 55-32 among Latinos.
Let's also recall the USC/LA Times poll from last month, which showed that voters want a Senator who will work to implement Obama's agenda. That's Barbara Boxer, who is right to embrace a president who, despite his failures that frustrate voters, remains popular in California.
Finally, we can't forget that Fiorina is so far to the right that she is going to have a difficult time getting elected here. Fiorina pledges to repeal health care reform and won't use government to create jobs. She is running as a Herbert Hoover candidate, planning to do to the US what she did to HP.
Californians don't want that - and Barbara Boxer knows it. The Boxer campaign has a tough fight ahead of it. But it's a fight she knows how to win.
Do you remember the bizarre and somewhat offensive Carly Blimp Commercial? Well, it appears that the Failorina campaign is attempting to push that further with their "grassroots" protesters at the site of various Boxer events. From MediaBistro's FishBowlLA blog:
What does it mean when all six of your protest signs are in the same handwriting with the same slogans in different cities on allegedly different days? It means as a movement you are so on the same page even your penmanship testifies to it. Carly Fiorina's Twitter account is proudly boasting about all these protests around California. "Protesters are gathering in Sacramento asking, 'where are the jobs?!?!'" (FishBowlLA)
Click on over to FishBowlLA for more photos of the same dude holding the same signs. These "grassroots" folks have really got the message consistency down!
Yesterday, Carly Fiorina was in the business of praising Sen. Feinstein. Then only hours later, she got all up into the business of trashing one of her main policy prerogatives, the assault weapons ban. Oh, and she went further, pretty much pretending that she was still in the Republican primary.
Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina said Tuesday that she opposes a ban on assault weapons and supports a U.S. Supreme Court decision this week affirming a constitutional right to bear arms.
In a 45-minute question-and-answer session with reporters here, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO also repeated her backing of Arizona's controversial immigration law and said she would support efforts to repeal the federal health care reform measure. But the fundamental issue in the race against three-term Sen. Barbara Boxer, Fiorina contended, will be whom voters trust more on the economy, and she said the contrast between the two could not be more stark. (SJ Merc)
Wow, I certainly hope for her sake that getting a bunch of Latino votes wasn't a part of her electoral strategy, because this repeated outpouring of support for Arizona's law won't win her that support. While Carly might criticize Whitman for appearing on Hannity the day after the primary, at least eMeg has the smarts to quit it with the anti-immigrant talk. Perhaps Carly thinks it will bring in some money from the anti-immigrant crowd, but will it really be enough money to make up for the loss of the votes she's going to get from that part of the interview?
At any rate, back to the assault weapons ban, Carly might want to take a look at who wrote that legislation. And who has been its strongest supporter throughout the last 20 years. Yup, that would be Dianne Feinstein. The very same senator that she was so effusive about yesterday.
Sen. Feinstein isn't always our favorite around here, but she hardly resembles Carly Fiorina. Yet, in comments today, Fiorina tried to snuggle up to Feinstein:
And she also continued a tradition of past Boxer opponents - she talked about how great senior Sen. Dianne Feinstein is and attempted to drive a wedge between the two. By the way, Feinstein is Boxer's campaign chairman.
"I think Dianne Feinstein has accomplished a great deal on behalf of the people of California and I admire and respect her for that,'' Fiorina said. She called Feinstein "a pragmatic voice on issues that matter to the people of California.''
In comparing California's two senators, Fiorina said "if you look at her voting record verses Barbara Boxer's you'll see that they disagree on virtually everything.''
When it was suggested to Fiorina that the two actually voted the same most of the time - Boxer says it's 90 percent - Fiorina backed down a bit.
"Well virtually everything is an overstatement,'' she said. (OC Register)
Well, facts are annoying, aren't they? At any rate, Sen Feinstein put out a statement in full support of Sen. Boxer today after the comments:
Senator Boxer and I have worked together for 18 years, as partners, in Washington -- and there is no daylight between us on the issues that matter most to Californians. We have worked together to create jobs and keep them in California. We have strongly defended a woman's right to choose. We believe that urgent action is necessary to halt climate change and create clean energy jobs, and we support permanently protecting California's coast from offshore oil drilling. In a time of serious terrorist threats to the homeland, we believe it is important to keep guns out of the hands of people whose names are on the terrorist watch list. And we both worked to get more water transfers in the Central Valley so that farmers could plant, hire and harvest this year. Let there be no doubt that I believe California needs Barbara Boxer in the Senate, now more than ever.
Have you ever wondered about those intense sessions with Carly Fiorina and her team right before she goes on TV? Do you think she's brushing up on the issues of the day? Mulling over tax proposals or possible changes to the health care system?
Well, you would be wrong.
Caught on an open mic, we learn that Carly likes to discuss the close relationship between Sean Hannity and Meg Whitman, Cheeseburgers, and, most importantly, Barbara Boxer's hair.
God, what was that hair? Soooo yesterday.
That was her actual quote. "Soooo" yesterday. Check out the clip to the right, and watch five minutes up close and personal with the failed HP CEO.
Check out Carly. She's still a loose canon. Fired from HP. Fired from the McCain campaign. And soon to be fired from California politics.
I think she's set the record in the least amount of time to lose a campaign after winning a nomination..10 hours.
I hope Boxer has some good oppo going because Carly's has plenty of videos of her supporting unpopular California opinions. In the vid below (4 min mark), Carly supports both drilling and Arizona's anti-Latino law. Come'on, Barbra, don't mess around. Hit her hard. Something like: "While I don't have the latest hairdo, I do represent the fairest and most democratic solutions to blah, blah, blah....
Well, it looks like all the polling showing Carly Failorina pulling ahead in the Senate primary has put a beating on Campbell's fundraising efforts. He's now pretty much conceding the race:
Capitulating to his dwindling campaign treasury, Republican Senate candidate Tom Campbell pulled his television advertising Tuesday and in the closing days of the primary race will rely on Internet appeals and telephone calls to make his case to GOP voters. (LAT)
You just can't win on phonecalls and internet appeals alone. That might be enough in Rhode Island, but in a state where millions of votes are required, you simply need more than just the internet. I know, you might not expect to hear that from an internet-type, but there it is.
To be frank, Campbell kind of scared me. He does this faux-moderate thing really well, and then yanks the rug out from under Californians who really need help. If Fiorina can continue to loan her campaign a few million of seed money, her campaign won't be completely hapless. However, she has an Achilles heal, her tenure at HP, that is her qualification for running.
I'm not calling anything yet, but this is the surest sign of any yet.
Remember 2008? Those halcyon days where there was discussion of a McCain-Fiorina ticket. Well, McCain ended up being quite thankful for that. Let's start with the clip to the right, where Fiorina says that McCain wouldn't be qualified to run HP. She says that
It is a fallacy to suggest that the country is like a company.
Of course, while this would also suggest that perhaps Fiorina doesn't have the necessary experience to be Senator for such a large state as California, she's not talking about that now. But, of course, there's more. When the campaign turned to executive compensation, McCain came out swinging, saying that some of the golden parachutes were absurd and way too high.
Well, yesterday the duo were back at it. Oh, and the subject of that Fiorina comment came up:
She was permanently sidelined two months before the election when she told a radio host that Sarah Palin, McCain's vice presidential pick, lacked the experience to lead a major corporation. She made the situation worse when she sought to clarify her remarks by adding that McCain and then-Sens. Obama and Joe Biden also were unqualified.
When asked about those remarks on Tuesday, McCain joked, "Did she say that?" Fiorina added, "I was making a general comment about all politicians, by the way, not John McCain specifically."
Ahh, such fun times. Two unqualified people, together again.
Tom Campbell was totally in it to win it. It's just that he was in it to win another "it." But his heart is totally in the Senate race now, though:
"What we've seen in the last year is a tremendous growth of the federal government, tripling the deficit and an expansion of the federal role in health care and financial services," Campbell told The Bee. "The federal issues are just exploding in the last year." (SacBee)
You see, it's just now that he realized that federal issues are important. Not when 12 months ago when Barack Obama inherited the worst economy in a generation. Not 6 months ago, when the vitriol around health care reached its crescendo. Not when President Obama was struggling with Afghanistan decisions. Now. When it looked like he was about to buried under a mountain of Whitman's cash.
Not to be a cynic twice over, but, well, I'm going to be a cynic again. Not only did Campbell wait, but he was also preening for the cameras in a perhaps more visible campaign. And one more thing, under state finance laws, one is allowed to raise a lot more than you are allowed to raise per contributor under federal laws. I wasn't able to determine how many big donors Campbell had, mostly because his funding was so anemic and the second half numbers haven't been filed yet. But, if one were to really, really need to raise his name ID, I'd think some additional time in the Gov race would be appealing
This has been brewing in the rumor mill for a few months now it seems. It looks like tomorrow will be the day that Tom Campbell makes it official. He's going to run in the GOP Senate Primary rather than for Governor.
In a move that will rock the state's political landscape, former Silicon Valley Congressman Tom Campbell will announce Thursday that he is dropping out of the California governor's race to run for the U.S. Senate, the Mercury News has learned.
Campbell has scheduled two news conferences to make the announcement: one at 9 a.m. in Los Angeles, the other at 2:30 p.m. at the San Jose Fairmont hotel, according to an e-mail from Campbell's campaign that was sent Monday to his major supporters. The e-mail referred to a "soon to be announced new venture" - confirmed by campaign sources to be a Senate run. (SJ Merc)
I think in order to rock the state's political landscape, you sort have to a) not telegraph the move months ahead of time and b) have a clear path to victory.
Tom Campbell would be a pretty tough race for Barbara Boxer. I think the betting line would still lean Boxer, but he's a more polished candidate than either Fiorina or DeVore. And he has the whole, not crazy thing going for him over DeVore. The trouble for Campbell is the same in the Senate race as it was in the Governor's race, except with a lot less money sloshing around. Basically, he's trying to run a campaign for the general electorate of the state in a primary. And given that the only people really excited to come out and vote in the GOP primary will be the right-wingers, the primary will be really, really tough for Campbell.
I suppose on the bright side for him, he won't be fighting Whitman's crazy dollars in this race. But the real winner here has to be Chuck DeVore. The "I can play sane on TV" vote just got split between Fiorina and Campbell. DeVore just might be able to somehow grab this nomination.
On the Larry Mantle Show on KPCC, Carly Fiorina had this to say:
I believe that life begins at conception. I would certainly that there are exceptions for the health of the mother. I support stem-cell research. But let me just say that on these very difficult social issues, I recognize that not everyone shares my views. I also recognize that these social issues are not whats on the table today.
Not sure what to say to this other than these two words: Stupak Amendment.
Rarely do you see such an epic takedown from the left in a dead trees major newspaper. Sure, sometimes you see something on the paper's blog, and you get the dissembling manifestos from the right. But, the combination of a progressive perspective and actual readers? Well, that's a rare one.
So here's the tally thus far on Fiorina the candidate: Business celebrity with an equivocal record, cancer survivor with a secure employer-sponsored health plan, "problem-solving" candidate spouting ancient Republican nostrums. I can hardly contain my excitement.
At one point, I thought Hiltzik was even eavesdropping on my gchats during her launch event. During a segment where she called for bills to be on the internet, specifically pointing to the health care bill, I said to my friend who was also watching, "well, maybe she can't steer her HP windows computer over to thomas.loc.gov." Because, you know, if she had, she would find on the home page of that site, a list of the major health care bills pending right now. I took a peek at the main house bill right here. It even has these things called hyperlinks to let you move around the bill easily.
Hiltzik has a similar takedown of her whole transparency argument. He then moves on to health care, where her "big idea" is pretty much the health insurance lobby's wet dream:
More disturbing is her advocacy of allowing insurers to sell policies across state lines. This is a "reform" the insurance industry has been after for years, because it would allow them to evade the more stringent regulations of some states by selling all their policies out of states with hands-off regulators.
For a clue to how this works, notice how credit card companies issue their cards from banks in places like South Dakota and Nevada, which have no usury limits, rather than, say, California, where the cap is 10%. But even Californians can't sign up for a card issued in California, so we're stuck with the South Dakota sky's-the-limit variety.
If this is what Carly Fiorina is going to bring, perhaps she will be able to get some big checks from Blue Cross. However, she won't be able to get the votes from Californians that one assumes are her ultimate goal.
Carly Fiorina is officially announcing her candidacy today. Not much of a surprise really, considering her dipping of the toes process for the past few months. She's going to stream the announcement live from Garden Grove at 10AM, you can catch it here or over the flip.
But if you just can't wait, well, she's gone ahead and published an op-ed in the OC Register. It's really just some seriously good times, and really I can't think of a better way to start off an announcement than apologizing for not voting in the past:
Admittedly, I have not always been engaged in the electoral process, and I should have been. For many years I felt disconnected from the decisions made in Washington and, to be honest, really didn't think my vote mattered because I didn't have a direct line of sight from my vote to a result.
Just lovely, get the fact that you don't think voting makes a real difference out there right away, and then wait until the second paragraph to say "Obviously I was wrong." It is really hard to think of a worse way to have to start off your campaign where you have to ask voters to, um, vote for you than by saying that as a leader of one of California's largest companies you didn't think it was worth your time to vote. Niiice. But don't worry, she's got other reasons why she should lose to challenge Barbara Boxer.
Despite polls showing strong support for the public option in California, she's going to replace real healthcare reform with tort deform!
Congress should reform medical malpractice to match what we have in California where frivolous lawsuits are a thing of the past. We should permit consumers to purchase health insurance from any company in the country, expanding consumer choice and driving down cost and unnecessary mandates.
People want to know that their care will stay where it belongs: in the hands of doctors and patients. Unfortunately, the path Congress is on in this debate is not giving us the confidence that it will.
And just if that isn't enough, she wants to neuter the stimulus, that her pal and fellow Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger praised vocally yesterday.
Tax, spend and borrow is not a governing philosophy; it's a cycle of dependency and it is one that must be broken. Washington must show the discipline to cut spending and create policies that encourage and empower businesses to put people back to work.
Ah, old school Republican word play, I can't think of any way to connect to a heavily Democratic general electorate. Oh, right, she has to face down Chuck DeVore in that primary, where she doesn't even have a substantial lead despite her supposed viability. I hope Fiorina is steeling herself for the conservative onslaught, they are pissed from losing in NY-23 and are on the warpath. DeVore's right-wing messaging could be just the rallying cry they've been looking for.
