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At this point in a re-election race, secure Democratic senators in Democratic-leaning states generally poll at a comfortable 55 percent or better in the matchup against a Republican opponent (Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland are examples).
But that’s not the case in California, where three-term Sen. Barbara Boxer will square off against GOP challenger Carly Fiorina in the pair's first debate Wednesday night. An average of the five most recent public polls shows Boxer getting 45 percent to Fiorina’s 41 percent. About 12 percent of respondents remain undecided.
President Barack Obama has trekked to California twice in recent months to help raise funds for Boxer, and Vice President Joe Biden held a fundraiser for her in July.
“I don't travel for just anybody,” Obama told attendees at a San Francisco fundraiser in May. “But when it comes to Barbara Boxer, I'm a lot like many of you, which is, if she calls and she says, ‘I need some help,’ then we're going to give her some help...”
While not as astonishing as Republican Sen. Scott Brown’s upset win last January in Massachusetts, a Fiorina victory would be dramatic. California hasn't elected a Republican senator since 1988. That was also the last time a Republican presidential candidate carried California.
Democrats enjoy an edge in party registration, with about 7.5 million Democrats to 5.2 million Republicans in the state; there are 3.4 million registered independents.
Boxer won her seat in 1992, lifted on the wave led by Bill Clinton in what was then dubbed “the Year of the Woman.” She beat conservative Los Angeles television and radio pundit Bruce Herschensohn by about half a million votes, or 5 percentage points.
In 1998 and 2006, Boxer easily fended off weak Republican rivals. In 2006, her victory margin was nearly 2.4 million votes.
Boxer’s current struggle isn’t entirely surprising in a year in which polls indicate a striking enthusiasm deficit among Democratic voters and in which fellow Democratic senators Patty Murray in Washington and Russ Feingold in Wisconsin are also locked in competitive contests, despite their states' Democratic lean.
Fiorina, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, served as a high-profile broadcast surrogate for Republican presidential candidate John McCain. She was ubiquitous on cable television before she was shunted aside after making the impolitic comment that McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin (and Obama and Biden) lacked the experience to run a corporation such as HP. (Palin endorsed Fiorina this year.)
“Boxer is out of practice” for a campaign debate, said John Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif. “Six years ago, she debated Bill Jones exactly once. She has taken part in floor discussions in the Senate, but the institution does not conduct ‘debate’ in the normal sense of the term.”
But, Pitney added, “don't count Boxer out. She knows the issues cold. Expect her to go after Fiorina on issues such as the environment. Her goal will be to portray Fiorina as too conservative for the California electorate.”
Democrats have slammed Fiorina for being rated “worst technology company CEO” in a 2005 USA Today story and for the job cuts she ordered when heading HP. They’ve assailed her for accepting Palin’s endorsement, for calling herself “pro-life,” and supporting the Arizona immigration law which would allow police to check the immigration status of people they stop during their routine duties.
Democrats have also tried to raise expectations for Fiorina’s performance, circulating a video showing GOP consultant and former Reagan speechwriter Ken Khachigian saying, “Next to Ronald Reagan and Bruce Herschensohn, she's very close to being one of the finest communicators on television that I've ever worked with.”
Fiorina has a penchant for hard-edged comments. She recently mocked Boxer’s concern that greenhouse gas emissions pose a national security issue: "Terrorism kills -- and Barbara Boxer's worried about the weather," said Fiorina in a TV ad.
Fiorina has also painted Boxer as a lifetime politician: she was first elected to public office in 1976 as a member of the Board of Supervisors in Marin County, north of San Francisco.
“When Barbara Boxer started getting a paycheck from us, a gallon of gasoline was 55 cents … and the number one song was Barbra Streisand’s ‘The Way We Were,’” Fiorina said in a recent speech.
"It's true that this is what I like to do. I'm proud of it," Boxer replied in comments to the San Francisco Chronicle Tuesday.
Senate contests between two female candidates are rare. Since 1944, there have been eight Senate elections that pitted two women against each other, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
Of the seventeen women now serving in the Senate, seven have defeated another woman at some point in their Senate career. Of those, five were incumbents when they defeated a female challenger; one, Sen. Barbara Mikulski, was running for an open seat; and one, North Carolina Democrat Kay Hagen, challenged a sitting female senator -- Republican Elizabeth Dole.
The Boxer-Fiorina contest could end up being the closest woman v. woman race in history. The closest such race to date occurred in 2002, when Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., won re-election against Republican Suzanne Haik Terrell. Landrieu won with 52 percent of the vote to Terrell's 48 percent.
(The Boxer-Fiorina debate, from 7 to 8 p.m. Pacific Time, will be streamed live on SFGate.com, KTVU.com and KQEDnews.org.)
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The reason for Boxers inability to put Purina away, is the same reason Democrats Nationwide seem to be having Troubles. The Left is Upset that they have'nt gotten everything they wanted & felt they were entitled to. So, just like Eric said this morning & Pam(wherever she is), they take thier ball & go Home, since the Rules did'nt Compensate them to thier likeing.
Will they come around by November?
Only Time will tell!
Good scenerio Rick, too bad that is not what the polls are showing. People aren't mad at what the Congress hasn't passed. They are mad at what they have passed. The #1 issue in almost every poll is the overspending of Congress. As Doug Schoen, Democratic pollster, said, an incumbent polling less than 50% at the point is in big trouble. History shows the uncommitted voters usually break 4 to 1 for the challenger. People are mad but not for the reason you are saying.
Boxer will win and so will Brown. These two ladies, Whitman and Fiorina have nothing to offer California that hasn't already been tried by Schwarzenegger himself.
At least he was entertaining and very funny at times!
These two ladies are about as dry as dog food.
This should be a very interesting debate. Boxer doesn't strike me as the "sharpest tack in the box", but she does have considerable experience to draw upon. Fiorina on the other hand seems to be a very adept communicator and will certainly be well prepared.
I think, due to the economy, Boxer will likely end up on defense and Fiorina will come out swinging. With the high unemployment rate in California and no visible economic progress on the horizon, she will need to explain how she has been effective. Even though Fiorina may have had issues that Boxer can try to exploit, she does have a business background and in times of economic instability voters tend to see this as a major positive.
If the questions are geared more towards the economy, I think Fiorina is likely to show better. If the questions trend towards the environment and other issues, Boxer may be able to win. We shall see.
JC writes
The article said she cut jobs at HP. Tell me JC how will cutting jobs improve our economy. I thought the problem is that their is not enought good paying jobs. I have to say cutting jobs at HP does fit in with the republicans agenda to attack workers wages and the middle class.
I'll be voting for Boxer and Whitman. Fiorina gives me a Michelle Bachmann vibe and Jerry Brown is Jerry Brown.
Boxer whatever,Jerkoff Brown---total looser. Only Ca would be dumb enough to elect this piece of Melba toast. Ca used to be such a great state,the nails were put in the coffin the last time the blacks burned the place down in the 90s. Between the millions of illegal Mexicans and Asians taking over it really does not matter who wins . Might as well fall off into the ocean and do the reat of America a favor.
Cutting state workers jobs in California might just be the only thing that saves the state fiscally in the long run, despite the short-run economic pain. The salary and benefits (including pension) being paid to state workers is way out of line with what the market is bearing in the private sector. Nobody likes job cuts. I've had my job cut before too and it wasn't fun. If a company or a state government is not viable in the long run because it spends too much money on employee costs in relation to their output, then the company has an obligation to its stakeholders to do the hard thing and make some cuts. The state of California does not exist so that the labor unions can retire young, fat, and happy. Its time to be adults and figure out what we can do without. If we need someone who has the guts to take a chainsaw to the budget, then we need her. What would you advocate Dem8? Continuing on the current spending spree until the state can't issue any more bonds and ALL services completely stop? That budget gap isn't exactly shrinking now, is it?
Let's face it, for 8 years the right got everything they ever dreamed up rubber stamped by a group of people so dedicated to special interests, K Street lobbyists turned 100% republican just to take that much more advantage of the party of special interests.
A vote for Carly would be a vote for more special interests.
There's a long way to go in Cali...and in every other state too,
Here's another sobering article from Nate Silver about democratic party chances in Nov. that no one will read but someone will criticize me for posting...Funny that they call this place "First Read"...
August 31, 2010, 5:20 pm
How Did Democrats Get Here?
By NATE SILVER
We talked this morning about the Democrats’ poor electoral position — already shaky, it is probably now deteriorating further — but we haven’t talked as much about why they are in this predicament. This is for a good reason: once you get past the premise that the state of the economy plays a large role (something that pretty much everyone would agree with), this is a difficult question to answer.
The reasons for the Democrats’ decline are, as we say in the business, overdetermined. That is, there are no lack of hypotheses to explain it: lots of causes for this one effect. The economy? Sure. Unpopular legislation like health care? Yep. Some “bad luck” events like the Gulf Oil spill? Mmm-hmm. The new energy breathed into conservatives by the Tea Party movement? Uh-huh.
And this hardly exhausts the theories. An inexperienced White House that has sometimes been surprisingly inept at coping with the 24/7 news media cycle? The poor optics associated with Democrats having had a filibuster-proof majority in theory, but not always in practice? All of the above.
These causes can’t be so easily untangled on the basis of polling evidence; there’s really no basis on which to evaluate the competing hypotheses. This is particularly so given that different types of political events aren’t isolated from one another — health care reform might have been unpopular, for instance, but the reason for its unpopularity may ultimately have been the economy.
For this reason, we can be skeptical of two types of analysis: claiming that Factor X definitely isn’t contributing to the Democrats’ troubles, and asserting that it definitely is. For instance, I’d urge some caution in reading this article at Real Clear Politics by Jay Cost — which rightly critiques those who have entirely dismissed the role that health care played in the Democrats’ decline, but probably goes too far in arguing the contrary. Mr. Cost is right, for instance, that the Democrats’ decline in the polls was steepest last summer, when the health care debate began — but when one delves in a little deeper, the timing of the sharpest periods of decline do not line up well with specific events in the health care debate.
Does that mean Mr. Cost is wrong? Not at all. Health care dominated the political discourse for about nine months; it seems implausible that it hasn’t played some role. But he hasn’t offered much in the way of proof — nor is there much of it to be had: overdetermined phenomena usually beget underdetermined attempts to explain them."
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/how-did-democrats-get-here/
Nate, Don't really need polls or even Jay Cost to know that Jimmy Carville is still right. It's ALWAYS the economy...
Doug Shoen is not a Democrat, he is a Fix news hack.
That is plain stupid and not factual. Doug Schoen was one of Clinton's pollster and worked for the Democratic party in the 2008 election. Schoen, Pat Goodell, Bob Beckell, and Christen Power appear on Fox but have all held pollster or strategist positions with the DNC in the recent past. Beckel was under secretary of state under Clinton. How many Republican strategists or worker appear on the DNC owned MSNBC?
jomama72
Doug Shoen is not a Democrat, he is a Fix news hack.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Douglas E. Schoen has been one of the most influential Democratic campaign consultants for over thirty years. Widely recognized as one of the co-inventors of overnight polling, Schoen has been revolutionizing the American voter polling process with his firm Penn, Schoen, and Berland for his entire career."
http://www.powerofthevote.com/about_doug_schoen.php
Mark and Doug were DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE Hillary Clinton's pollsters/consultants in 2008...
Throwing everyone you disagree with under the bus and calling them "Fix news hack"(s) is one of the reasons the Party is in such excellent shape right now.
jomama, you are polishing the brass on a sinking ship!
He is a Dick Morris clone, is Dick the toe man a democrat?
They don't like Charlie Cook at First Read, either.
I should say...the bloggers don't like him.
People like Chris Matthews and Chuck Todd love him.
They're smarter than most of the rabble here.
The trouble with voters is that a majority of them don't research the consequence of their vote. Yes, I am unhappy with Barbara Boxer, but look at the alternative. Do we really want to put Cruella F_UPrina in charge of our lives. Look what happened at HP when she was given the leadership role. She lost jobs by sending them oversees, she didn't do her homework before buying Compaq, and when the board of directors were unhappy with her work, she wiretapped them.
And she is now funding her campaign with her golden parachute money. C'mon California........wake up and smell the coffee and stop drinking the tea that she is giving you.
Agreed, Fiorina was a terrible CEO, I'm amazed that Barbara's campaign sheds little light on JUST HOW MANY jobs she shipped over seas from HP just so she could maximize her stock options.
I can't stand Boxer, but to get rid of her would be to swap a Sr. Senator for a Jr.-one and I dislike Fiorina's newly adopted stances on anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion, and frankly being very wishy-washy regarding illegal immigration (she doesn't want to be outwardly pro like Boxer, but not anti because the Right doesn't really want to solve illegal immigration either and tried to pass amnesty in '06)!
I would have voted for Campbell, but I think Fiorina is not getting my vote
Agreed. Campbell was the Republican most likely to appeal to the middle (thus why he got my vote), but the far right had to go with their "pure" choice.
And it is precisely this zero-sum game that makes me dispise both sides. They are pulling the political equivalent of "Sticky-Prices" (economics term). It's tacit collusion, plain and simple! Neither side wants to alienate their wealthiest constituents, so they try to find the best comprimise that is appealing to their hardliners, but still juuuuuust appealing enough to possibly beat the corrupt puppet that the other side is grooming!
I want to sue the Dems and Repubs for collusion!
I refuse to vote for a Fundie, a NeoCon, Union-Tard, a Bagger, or any other fringe lunatic!
Even the Democrats hated Bill Clinton, they were trying to run their poster child and Clinton won as a dark horse in the primary!
Republicans hated Bill because he actually used a bunch of their ideas that they were too chicken or never actually intended to use in the first place!
If only a 3rd party could actually field a genuinely centrist candidate! There's not enough funding in the world to beat the collective billions that the Left and Right would throw against them though, especially after McCain-Feingold was defanged and the sky is became the limit for corporate political campaigning!
California resident that I am I realize the following:
1. Boxer will win.
2. Brown will win.
This is because we have had more than 8 years of Schwarzenegger. At least he was entertaining. These two ladies, Whitman and Fiorina, have nothing to offer us.
Yeah, I think Boxer will probably win. Whitman I'm not so sure of, but Jerry Brown is awful, so I think she has a pretty decent shot, even if her Spanish-language ad campaigns are totally pro-illegal immigrant while her English-language campaign is the exact opposite.
Typical politician double-talk.
I just hope that the redistricting is really going to make a difference in our legislature and congressional representatives.
"All those years of Schwarzenegger" isn't the reason for California's budget crisis. I can name four things that are far bigger disasters: 1) The state labor unions cozy relationship with the Democratic state legislature. When you allow your state workers, who make excellent wages, to retire in their mid-fifties with full benefits, the sum total of the related cost is a moster of a burden for the taxpayers. The legislature gives the unions sweet deals in exchange for votes and contributions. 2) The cost of illegal immigrants on the taxpayers is big and getting bigger. 3) California has made it increasingly expensive to manufacture in the state through taxes and regulations, while neighboring states have lured companies away. 4) Property tax laws that keep the local tax collections too low to support local area government and education, sucking resources from the State.
I love California - its my favorite place that I have ever lived. However, until the state legislature starts acting like grownups and making decisions that are right for the state and not just their political allies, the state will continue head first into bankruptcy.
Citizen Zane
Agreed +1 for you!
I hope that the redistricting breaks the Gerrymandering we have in all of the congressional districts! It's outrageous that there is no competition with many of these people...they've all carved out their own little secure safe-zones.
Also, regarding the property taxes, if we would actually take care of our illegal immigrant problem, it would save California well over $12 billion. A lot of areas are draining the public schools because the illegal population sends their kids to them like daycare, yet pay no property taxes because the use their kids to apply for Section 8 housing or they pack 3-families to a single-family dwelling and artificially over-populate a region.
If CA could successfully pass anything like AZ's SB1070, Van Nuys, Boyle Heights, Sylmar, Pacoima, Panarama City, etc would probably become ghost towns in less than a year.
Regarding state labor unions....SO VERY MUCH AGREED! I remember the uproar that occurred when Schwarzenegger tried to mandate that unions only hold an anonymous vote when they vote to decide where and if to direct their funding politically because of how many people were being intimidated by union bosses if they didn't vote they way they wanted!
This isn't rocket science. Obama ran a little left of center campaign. Once elected he bounced as far left as you can get. People didn't vote him in for a huge healthcare entitlement but to reduce the rate of inflation. They didn't vote him in to install Crap & Tax but instead to address high energy costs. They voted for him to grow the economy not pass 2,000 pages of regulation and gov't control but exclude Fannie/ Freddie. They voted for him to bridge the Dem / Rep gap instead he is hyper partisan. They voted for a transparent government no hidden cabinets (czars), back room deals and political buy-offs. They expected cool, calm leadership but not waiting two weeks to address a major oil spill. I also don't think they expected the arrogance. The cleanup starts in November and will end in 2012.
The problem is clean up with what? The Republicans got spanked last election cycle because their side is full of hypocrites and morons that want to turn the US into either a corporate oligarchy or an oppressive theocracy.
If the Republicans really want to become more competitive, they need to stop trying to appeal to the nuts in the Religious Reich or the Neo (decepti)Cons.
--The US needs to clean up its regulatory agencies of corruption and conflicts of interest (FDA, FCC, USDA, DOA, DOJ, SEC, etc.)
--Break apart monopolies/oligopolies that are choking the free market and stifling recovery by taking incredibly short-term, uncompetitive strategies to maximize short-term gain.
--Modernize regulation against all natural monopolies (e.g. power companies that fight alternative energy, or try to prevent entrants of new competition)
--Audit the Federal Reserve comprehensively and prosecute anyone that made a decision where a conflict of interest exists and was acted upon.
--Modernize and Reinstate Glass Steagel
--Raise the Fed rate to reward people that are already saving and bring US jobs back home and make domestic US industry competitive again!
And those are just on my fiscal policy wishlist! Find me a viable candidate, D or R, that supports this and they will get my vote. For now, I'm still trying to figure out how to resurrect Teddy Roosevelt!
and when HP let her go all she had to say was " i guess i didn't fire enough people fast enough " she is a horrible person. period!!!!
dji, square on the nailhead. Bravo!
I'm going to write in Campbell on my ballot for CA Senator...I can't stand Fiorina and Boxer barely does anything for CA, she is too busy writing books, sending business her husband's way and enjoying her free air travel
It's not the position of governor that has caused California's problems, it has been the democratic, tax and spend policies. Remember we recalled the democratic governor when he couldn't and wouldn't do the job. Brown is just to old and never was a good governor. Remember we had to vote 3 of his supreme court justices out of office because they were lousy judges. Don't know that much about Whitman yet, but anyone would be better than Brown. Brown will be just like the democratic legislators in California, beholden to the labor unions, especially the Teachers, Nurses, corrections, and SEIU.
Please, gimme a break. I don't live in Ca-lee-fornia as Schwarzenegger cals it; but, common sense should tell any sober individual you don't want a failed executive to help run your state. At least I don't because as a senator her vote influnces the rest of America.
Ditto, Meg Whitman the long-serving C.E.O. of eBay, a shelter for fraudulent sellers . Meg Whitman may think her millions can buy Ca-lee-fornia. However, I'm betting Ca-lee-fornia is saying "Let the buyer beware"
Then let Chicago and the rest of Illinois have Jerry (if it's) Brown (flush it). California can ill afford this pro-union, pro-lawyers, pro-spend what California doesn't have. With CALPERS waiting in the wings, that loser fund will take down the nation.
Where's the common sense and sobriety in your posts, Bev?
I have good news for you...I actually AM a California voter.
And, YOU can actually make a difference, Bev...
You can tell me why I should vote for Boxer or Brown.
I thought our senators were elected every 6 years. If Boxer were elected in 1992 (which she was, according to her official web site), and re-elected in '98, how'd she wind up running in 2006? The answer is: she didn't. Her last election was in 2004, NOT 2006.
I know it's nit-picky, and doesn't really impact the debate. However I'm really getting tired of the sloppiness of our news sources. How are we supposed to trust the information we're reading if the simplest of facts are vetted and edited. And this, from a "real" news site. Good luck with Fox...
Indeed, but this is symptomatic of the fact that all MSM applies its own spin to the news. I miss the days when it was illegal to own both print and televised media under one entity. Everyone just pulls from APnewswire or just makes sh*t up like_Fox_News
Most people end up stuck, getting their news from either Ted Turner or Rupert Murdoch. Take your spin which ever way is easiest to digest. Forget real fact check or truly investigative reporting, we've got politicians on the payroll, and we don't want the public to fire them.
A lot depends on which poll your believe. I believe Rasmussen is the most accurate and here's what they have.The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in California shows Boxer with 44% support, while Fiorina picks up 43% of the vote. Five percent (5%) like another candidate in the race, and eight percent (8%) are undecided. Boxer will be real lucky if she wins. Most Democrat voters are going to stay home. They can't bring themselves to vote republican, and they're fed up with the Democrats.
Beverly, any incumbent polling less than 50% with less than 60 days left is in trouble. Any pollster will tell you that. People may not know enough about Fiorina but the people of California do know Boxer and she is still only getting 45% of the people.
Ray W.
Beverly, any incumbent polling less than 50% with less than 60 days left is in trouble. Any pollster will tell you that. People may not know enough about Fiorina but the people of California do know Boxer and she is still only getting 45% of the people.
Oh yea, Ray
Three weeks before election Murkowski polling numbers were her 20-to-1 before Tea Bagger Miller and Sarah's hit job caught Murkowski.
Bev-
You're trying to catch a train that's headed in the opposite direction of your destination.
You really don't understand what happened in Alaska, do you?
You won't understand what happened the morning after Election Day in November, either.
Beverly, did that make sense to you? Four weeks ago Murkowski was polling less than 50% among Republicans. Proves my point.
Well California how have those Democratic ideals been working out for your state? I think you need some CHANGE you can believe in!
Watt
We've had a republican Governor for the last eight years. The only experience Fiorena has is cutting jobs and outsourcing jobs. When will you clowns learn that the only thing Republicans want to do is take from the middle class and give to the rich.
The last 30 years the top 1% have seen their real wage growth increase by 300% during the same period the middle class has seen their real wage growth increase by 3%. The only people that benefit from the Reagan and Bush tax cuts to the rich were the rich.
Dem8,
"the only thing Republicans want to do is to take from the middle class and give it to the rich"
What a stupid statement. That's like saying that the only thing that the Democrats want to do is take money from the taxpayers and give it to the unions and the people NOT paying taxes. I happen to be solidly middle class and I am 100% certain that the Democrats are far more interested in taxing me and sending it to their supporters than they are in protecting my interests. Did the Bush tax cuts take money out of your pocket and give it to some wealthy guy or did they actually put MORE money into your pocket. Did the Republicans raise YOUR income tax rates and give the money to the rich? I'm sure that both political parties do what they can to funnel taxpayer money to their supporters. If you are going to blame one, you have to blame the other too.
Who is going to stand up for the average taxpayer for a change? The only people who seem to be pursuing that agenda are the Tea Party. Paint them as "extremists" or (shudder) "racists", but they are the only adults in the room who want Congress to start acting as responsible representitives of the taxpayer.
Sorry I am one of those 12% & like me I have made up my mind about Jerry Brown. He has done nothing but help create the pension mess we have today. No ambition, just another career pol padding his own pension check. ditto for Barbara, she plans on hitting her rival on being too conservative for Calfiornia.  Really, isn't that what we need now, is someone who will counterbalance the Dems way of spend, spend spend & tax its Citizens. Its not going to be a walk in the park this time. People are opening there eyes & questioning just what have you done other that create a fiscal nightmare for the last 20 yrs.  Its more on an issue than these Liberal Dems think!!!
Give me a moderate Republican like Campbell, and I vote Republican. Give me Michelle Bachmann II and I stay with Boxer.
I'm just going to write in Campbell on the ballet, Fiorina and Boxer both stink from entirely different situations, but the very same reason...corruption
It's too bad that Democrats and Republicans refuse to run their strongest candidates...there's no extra medal for winning by a landslide vs. just by the skin of one's teeth...at least the weaker-winner is more beholden to their backers.
The main difference between Boxer and Fiorina is that Boxer has never had to go to the banks, borrow funds to meet payroll for her employees. Or sit down with a Board of Directors and explain they have tough choices ahead to maintain profitability, hiring additional individuals and turning out products that can make or break a company. Boxer just sits with lobbyists and reviews how she can get more votes, gives the unions everything they ask for and they keep sending mailings to all their members telling their members they must vote for Boxer if they want to keep their jobs......................These are real differences. Boxer just looks to the taxpayers for more taxes, nothing to it. She has never had to make real decisions. it's all like playing Monopoly to her, these not real dollars. Just keep taking from others to buy herself votes!
Heheh, she didn't sit with her board of directors, she (allegedly) illegally wiretapped them instead
The main difference between Boxer and Fiorina is that Boxer has never had to go to the banks, borrow funds to meet payroll for her employees. Or sit down with a Board of Directors and explain they have tough choices ahead to maintain profitability, hiring additional individuals and turning out products that can make or break a company. Boxer just sits with lobbyists and reviews how she can get more votes, gives the unions everything they ask for and they keep sending mailings to all their members telling their members they must vote for Boxer if they want to keep their jobs......................These are real differences. Boxer just looks to the taxpayers for more taxes, nothing to it. She has never had to make real decisions. it's all like playing Monopoly to her, these not real dollars. Just keep taking from others to buy herself votes!
An executive going before a Board of Directors has only one question to answer: "How's the stock price?"
If laying off half of your work force raises the stock price, you get a big bonus.
So, as a senator, if Carly can eliminate half of the unemployment roles by ending benefits early, in spite of people still not having job because her corporate buddies have laid them off, she will expect and give herself a big bonus.
Now there's some liberal illogic! What a mental midget! Unlike the Government, who never considers a budget something to adhere to, companies must or they will fail. Furthermore, if I can cut back my work force and get the same bottom line results then I should be commended for making my company more lean and profitable.
I'm guessing that your are one more of the government drones inching your way to a fat pension!
If you don't get it the first time, read it again!
Fierina will literally wipe the floor in a debate with this career politician bozo. She has written and performed the highest levels of presentations and sat on real boards making tough decisions for a living. Everything she says she will have thought of and written herself. She will be able to competently defend herself on every point. I saw her in action and she is more of a "conservative on finances and a liberal on social issues". This puts her in the catbird seat for everything California voters want to hear.
The hardest decision Boxer has made since taking political office is what restaurant she wants the lobbyists to take her to. Boxer is totally desperate to entertain this debate and the party must have provided here with a huge team of writers to set her all up. Once taken off the writers material she will be totally lost and blowing smoke. Being a hard line Democrat all she can talk about is how spending, spending and spending some more will fix everything. Boxer with her life experience would be lucky to get a job in a donut shop after leaving politics.
There is a huge wave of independent voters that are not included in the polls that are all going to come out of the woodwork and vote for any candidates conservative on finances and liberal on social issues. The first major party who figures this out will mean the death of the other party but don't hold your breath.
The first sentence of your last paragraph is 100% accurate. Independents are on the rise and will be the single biggest voting block in the coming elections. Don't expect us to fall for fancy words or promises from either party. We did that the last 2 Presidential elections. They have completely lost our trust. Remove all incumbents. We are sick of power Party politics. This is not a part of the Tea Party movement We are serious voters or are ready to take back the mistakes we have made over the last couple of decades. The biggest one, not voting enough. Our numbers will bring "shock and awe" to both parties. These primaries are only a beginning. Novemeber will be loud and clear.
I guess what it really comes down to, do the voters in California want to keep Boxer in, someone who knows whats going on and been around a long time and is the incumbent (which most voters say they are mad at the incumbents) or do they want Fiorina, the fired CEO from HP who has been accused of shipping many jobs overseas. At first glance I would say to keep Boxer in as it seems that Fiorina could not even do the job of running a company and would not know how she would handle representing the people of California.
Actually she did do her job. She restored the bottom line she had to be fired to repair a damaged image for the company. Don't blame the company, blame the CEO. Kind of like, don't blame the voters, blame the President.
In all fairness let's take a look at what company we are talking about.....Hewlitt Packard. Probably less than a tiny handful of people in the country would be qualified to be hired as CEO of HP. That company is as large as many cities we have in the US. It is international and in what has become the most highly competitive market on the planet..... Personal computers.
Now to be fair what company has Boxer run? She could not run a lemonade stand for a week before she would be borrowing. The only way she knows how to get anything done is borrow. She is part of a now $3 trillion dollar deficit year and has no problems with it. Do you hear Democrats talking about downsizing anything in the federal government? How about 1 employee laid off? How about cutting a little federal benefits? Maybe cutting a holiday? NADA
Adios to incumbents. You don't need to know much to listen to your taxpayers and vote on behalf of their interests. They have staffs for all the bureaucratic paper work etc. Someone who "knows what's going on and been around a long time" is a curse and the worst prerequisite for what needs to be done in 2011/2012. These incumbents are "good times" politicians with no clue how to get the country out of the mess they put us in. They could not even balance a budget during the best times the country ever had.
I thought our senators were elected every 6 years. If Boxer were elected in 1992 (which she was, according to her official web site), and re-elected in '98, how'd she wind up running in 2006? The answer is: she didn't. Her last election was in 2004, NOT 2006.
I know it's nit-picky, and doesn't really impact the debate. However I'm really getting tired of the sloppiness of our news sources. How are we supposed to trust the information we're reading if the simplest of facts are vetted and edited. And this, from a "real" news site...
A slip of the fingers and poor editing. It happens, I am certainly guilty, though I don't consider myself a professional journalist.
Only for the candidates I want to lose.
As I recall Barbara Boxer once admitted that she can't even balance her check book! Maybe that's why she doesn't fully understand that attemtpting to stimulate the economy by solely protecting government jobs simply doesn't work! She's a career bureaucrat whose been living off of the government dole for almost 40 years and it's high time we boot this ultra liberal out of the Senate; my gawd, the woman is a mental midget!
So lets make some comparisons between Boxer and Florina:
Boxer has worked on legislation regarding human rights, environmental protection, military procurement reform, and abortion issues from a pro-choice stance.
Senator Boxer is part of a coalition to increase medical research to find cures for diseases. In 2007, she authored successful bipartisan legislation with Senator Gordon Smith to combat HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis globally.[23] She authored a Patients' Bill of Rights in 1997. She has written a bill to make health insurance tax deductible and another bill to let any American buy into the same health insurance program that members of Congress have. She supports comprehensive prescription drug coverage through Medicare and the right of all consumers to purchase lower-cost prescription drugs re-imported from Canada.
Boxer supports the current system of Social Security, and opposed President George W. Bush's plan for partial privatization of Social Security
Boxer authored a bill to protect commercial airliners against attacks by shoulder-fired missiles, and wrote the law allowing airline pilots with special training to carry guns in the cockpit.
In October 2002, Boxer voted against the joint resolution passed by the U.S. Congress to authorize the use of military force by the Bush Administration against Iraq.
Florina, in a fit of paranoia, wiretapped the board at HP when she was CEO.
Boxer voted yes on the healtcare monstrosity against the wishes of the majority of her constituents. Does that make her a good representitive of the people?
Barbara Boxer supports abortion even until the mother's due date and even partial-birth abortion. She is truly out of touch with most Californians who do not view abortion as a means of birth control.
Fiorina supports life
Barbara Boxer supports an unsustainable pension system in California, where certain state employees can retire after 20 years with full salary (try finding that kind of perk in the private sector!!!!!!!!).
Fiorina supports common sense pension reform
Barbara Boxer mocked Condoleeza Rice because she was unmarried and childless. California truly has a classless senator. In another senate hearing she scolded a brigadier general by saying "don’t-call-me-ma’am-I’m-a-Senator." She needs to take lessons in civility from Diane Feinstein who at least is kind and charming most of the time (too bad she is a liberal). Barbara Boxer has disdain for the military (except when they are there to pick up the pieces when earthquakes hit California--then she pretends to be grateful).
When confronted with the facts of climategate by British scientists, she said: “In my opening statement, I didn’t quote one international scientist or IPCC report. … We are quoting the American scientific community here.”
What??? We shouldn't listen to any scientists but American ones? Does this WITCH have a brain?
We do not know much about Fiorina but we do know one thing--Barbara Boxer is a stupid witch and needs to be defeated at the polls because she and her ilk are taking us to the brink of economic and social destruction.
By the way, Boxer's support of the current system of Social Security is nothing to be proud of; it should be a badge of scorn. George W. Bush was the first president BRAVE ENOUGH to dare to suggest that this dinosaur entitlement program was not going to be sustainable and needed reform. Every person who has paid into the system should get every penny back (plus interest) and then be allowed to invest it AS THEY SEE FIT. If they are foolish with their investments then THEY SHOULD PAY THE PRICE. If they cannot trust themselves then they should be given the option to stay in the system. Everyone under the age of 40 should have the option of participation in the current plan or a private one of their choosing. They should be given a choice of investments (fixed income, equities, balanced, etc) similar to a 401(k) plan and as they get closer to retirement age it should automatically shift to more conservative investments, similar to a lifecycle fund. This nation has become overly reliant on this entitlement and too many people refuse to save in other accounts and are relying solely on Social INsecurity to provide for their retirement well-being.
Wow, so what did you all think of your liberal brother trying to blow himself up? All over Al Gore, that "crazy sex poodle". Aren't you glad he was not elected in 2000? What an embarassment that would have been!!!