Tag Archives: Barbara Boxer

Health Care

Both California Senators Pushed for the Public Option

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Sometimes Sen. Feinstein gets a hard time around these parts, but on the public option, it seems she and Senator Boxer are paddling in the same direction.  Both Senators pushed Sen. Reid to include the public option in the bill that will be brought to the Senate floor.

As the Senate prepares to debate a massive health care overhaul, California Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein are pushing hard for a public option, which would allow the federal government to compete with private insurers.

The two senators are included in a group of 30 who wrote a letter earlier this month to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, asking that a public option be included in the Senate bill. (CapAlert)

The public option, with a state opt-out, was in the bill. It is disappointing that the opt-out provision was included, especially considering how easy it is for health insurance companies to leverage campaign contributions in many state legislatures, it seems that this is the way momentum is running for the time being.

Others who pay more attention to this stuff can probably explain this better, but the logic seems to be that even a less than national public option will have some cost benefits as well as pressure for states to eventually sign on to the public option.

Election 2010

Barbara Boxer Live House Party

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Senator Boxer (for whom I proudly work) and supporters across the state are hosting campaign house parties this afternoon. For Caliticians who aren’t able to attend one of the parties, you can watch live here as Senator Boxer and L.A. Councilman Bill Rosendahl discuss the Kerry-Boxer climate change bill, the campaign, and answer questions from house parties.

Edit by Brian: Archived video over the flip.

Uncategorized

CA-SEN: Boxer Maintains Cushion As Fiorina Loses Ground

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Field continues its data dump with the poll numbers for the Senate race (PDF).  While just skating the magical “50% line” Senator Boxer is doing pretty well at this point:

When Boxer is paired against the two GOP U.S. Senate hopefuls, the incumbent holds early

























Candidate Fav Unfav No Opinion
Boxer 48 39 13
Fiorina 12 16 72
DeVore 9 9 82
double-digit leads over her two lesser-known opponents in general election match-ups.  Against Fiorina, Boxer’s lead is 49% to 35%.  When she is paired against DeVore her lead is 50% to 33%.

Senator Boxer has a huge advantage in name ID, but it is very heartening to see that despite the constant right-wing attacks against her, she is still a very solid +9 on the favorability scores.  So few have heard of Fiorina and DeVore that the numbers aren’t hugely significant right now. However, I did find it interesting that more Democrats than Republicans had an opinion of Fiorina.

But in the Republican battle, these numbers must be insanely frustrating for Carly Fiorina.  She was supposed to cruise to the nomination, but she is tied (21-20) with Chuck DeVore, a right-wing Assemblyman without a ton of money.  You have to wonder, if she doesn’t bounce back from her bad month or so that she had, will she really want to get involved in this mess.  Carlyfornia Dreamin’ was such a clear disaster, will she really want to sink much of her own money into the race, and will people really give her any money if she doesn’t sink some of her ill-gotten HP gains into it? It’s really something of a vicious feedback loop for Carly now.

Meanwhile, Senator Boxer is losing some of her base enthusiasm. A health care and/or climate change win would do worlds of good for her amongst the Democratic base. Although perhaps some better language on cap and trade wouldn’t hurt either.

Health Care

Boxer Finally Jumps Aboard, Insisting On A Strong Public Option In Final Senate Bill

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I’m hearing from sources about a letter to Harry Reid from a collection of liberal Senators, led by Sens. Jay Rockefeller and Sherrod Brown, insisting that Reid publicly commit to putting a public option in any health care bill that reaches the Senate floor.  There’s a big difference between having a public option in the bill before the fact or trying to get it in by amendment.  It’s likely that amendments to the bill will require a 60-vote threshold, therefore it would take 60 votes to get a public option into the bill if it’s absent, or 60 to get one out of the bill if it’s present.  Nobody has said that there are those numbers of votes to do either of those actions.  So whether the bill comes to the Senate floor with a public option or not is a crucial decision.  The four people in that room making that decision are Max Baucus of the Finance Committee, Tom Harkin of the HELP Committee, Harry Reid and someone from the White House.  A lot of this will depend on the White House’s inclination, and they certainly floated their support over the weekend.  But Reid’s public statements have been noncommital.

The liberal faction in the Senate, led by Rockefeller and Brown but also for the first time including Sen. Barbara Boxer, want a real commitment.  According to sources, Sen. Reid will meet with this faction at 5pm ET.  Senator Reid’s office confirms that this meeting will be held today.  So presumably, some kind of accommodation will be offered, although the liberal Senators in the meeting will seek a definitive commitment, I’m told.

There have been various talks from public option supporters in the Senate about wanting to see it in the final bill, but this is the furthest it has gone, to my knowledge.  Some Senators, like Sen. Boxer, are going on the record insisting a public option for the first time.  Of course we don’t know what form this “public option” will take – the Wall Street Journal reports today that Tom Carper’s state-based approach is gaining support among Senate moderates, and Debbie Stabenow in a press conference today confirmed that this is a possibility:

In a press conference this morning with other Democratic senators, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) — member of the Senate Finance Committee and a supporter of a robust public option — says it’s a “broad definition.”

“The states are one way to go,” she said

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), who also sits on Finance and supports a public option as enthusiastically as Stabenow does, added, “There are state options that are devised in such a way that only a region of the state is included, in which case that’s not really a significant public option.”

“If the whole state is included in a public option — they have that option — well that’s a much more significant standard than some that have been proposed,” Menendez told reporters.

I would assume that Reid may offer this as a compromise inclusion in the bill.  We’ll see if the Brown-Rockefeller faction will take the deal.  Certainly they are pushing very hard for a higher standard than that.  And with the House of Representatives close in getting majority support for a public option using Medicare +5% rates, perhaps that gives them some leverage too.

California

Barbara Boxer Goes to Bat for Factory Farms

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Barbara Boxer, whose reputation is just to the right of Bernie Sanders, has gone to bat for factory dairy farms. The landscape of the dairy industry is such that the traditional dairy states like Wisconsin, New York, and Vermont are home to smaller farms (on average) than states like California and Idaho, where the dairy industry has been locating enormous factory farms with tens of thousands of cows in recent years. And right now all farms, big and small alike, are in trouble financially. The price of milk is below the cost of production and farms are therefore LOSING money for every gallon they produce.

Congress is on the verge of passing legislation to give money to help struggling dairy farmers, and Senators from traditional dairy states like New York want the money to favor small farms. That would send the money disproportionately to their states, but I don’t have a problem with that at all. The dairy culture in places like Wisconsin and Vermont is tangible when you visit those states. Loss of those farms would result in further moving the dairy industry west and with it would go a part of those states’ culture. The same could not be said of the enormous farms out west. Furthermore, enormous farms benefit disproportionately from the low-cost labor of undocumented workers, which rigs the market against smaller, family operations in which dairy farmers attempt to earn a living wage without breaking the law. I’ll be writing Barbara Boxer an email, asking her to quit shilling for factory farms. If you live in California, please join me in doing the same (if you live elsewhere, you can call Boxer’s Senate office at (202) 224-3553.

Election 2010

Carlyfornia, Here We Come

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iCarly has launched her campaign website today – and quickly showed the state and the online world why she has gotten such a reputation for failure.

As the incomparable Baratunde Thurston has explained in the YouTube video at right (put together just minutes after iCarly’s site went live), her site is the “worst political website ever.” The Flash image in particular is stunningly absurd, reading:

It’s day & night. It’s dogs & cats. It’s good & bad. It’s Carly vs. Boxer. Coming soon? carlyfornia dreamin’ !!!

Aside from the totally out of left field “dogs and cats” (I’m guessing iCarly is giving up on the cat lover vote?!), the images used to illustrate each dichotomy are even sillier. “Good” is a cherub. “Bad” is a ninja. A ninja!

Baratunde Thurston’s reply isn’t the only way that iCarly’s FAIL has gone viral. Twitter users have created a #Carlyfornia hashtag that includes some of the following gems:

ravenb In #Carlyfornia the Peter Principle is the law of the land.

femlaw #Carlyfornia As Meg Ryan said in When Harry Met Sally, “Is someone supposed to be a dog in this scenario?”

cruickshank In #Carlyfornia cats will be rounded up and herded into FEMA camps.

DanteAtkins In #Carlyfornia, everyone sets their Twitter timezone to Tehran. Of course, for HP that’s actually local time.

Of course, there are more fundamental questions about the site. It’s not quite clear what the purpose of the amateurish design and flash image is – to paint Boxer as a bad cat? And her Facebook page, with a whopping 20 supporters, makes NO mention of her time as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, a company she ran into the ground while firing 18,000 employees.

Online, as with everything else in her professional life, iCarly fails at whatever she touches. Somewhere, Chuck DeVore is probably laughing.

Uncategorized

iCarly: The Punchline that Never Gets Old

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It’s almost too easy to attack Carly Fiorina. I mean, what with the 19th Worst American CEO of All-Time Award hanging over her head and all, it’s not even that much fun.

But, leave it to iCarly to ensure that we simply cannot stop talking about her.  Her campaign is fizzling even before it officially launches.  Over at righty blog RedState, they have word that Fiorina will not self-fund her campaign one iota.

The takeaway here? Carly Fiorina will not self-fund. Actually, let me give that the all-caps extravaganza it deserves:

Carly Fiorina WILL NOT SELF-FUND.

Given that the NRSC and Senator Cornyn, in public and private, have touted Carly’s self-funding potential as the major reason for supporting her – despite her record of political non-participation, despite her emerging Iran scandal, despite her lackluster corporate record, and despite her series of foot-in-mouth moments – this is a big deal. We have Cornyn and the NRSC telling donors and big names, “Screw Chuck DeVore and the conservative grassroots, we want Carly’s cash,” and we have Carly telling potential hires, “My cash ain’t coming.”

How inept can the NRSC be? History has yet to record a full answer. And that’s not even the whole story.

And given the extraordinary level of effort that the National Republican Senate Committee (NRSC) has put into recruiting Fiorina to run, this is rather embarrassing. She cannot hire a campaign manager because anybody worth a lick realizes that Fiorina has no shot without at least some level of self-funding.

She did hire a fundraiser, Marty Wilson, who was very briefly with Poizner’s campaign, and did most of the raising for the Governor’s campaigns. However, it appears that he is finding the going quite tough with a candidate that doesn’t really have the base with her and isn’t prepared to self-fund.

This campaign could, quite possibly, be the most hilarious campaign since oh, hmmm, well, we really do have too many funny campaigns in this state, don’t we? Anyway, it’s gonna be hilarious!

Uncategorized

Have a Question for Senator Boxer?

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Senator Boxer is heading into an election next year, and so the campaign is gearing up. On Saturday, September 12, she’s inviting folks to hold house parties across the state.  Here at Calitics, we are planning to hold something of an online “house party.”

So, we’ll be streaming the Senator’s live webcast and are going to submit a question to the Senator, and we want to get your input on a question. I have some ideas on what I’d like to hear. Beyond health care, there are still questions about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the ACES climate change bill.

So, let us know in the comments what you would like to see the Senator take on, and we’ll decide on a question to ask.

Uncategorized

Fiorina’s In It To Spy On It

Carly Fiorina is a noted failure in such fields as business, citizenship  and spying. According to Shane Goldmacher, she’s now going to give politics the ol’ college try and has formed an exploratory committee for the 2010 Senate campaign against Barbara Boxer.

While one poll had Fiorina as close as 4 points, it seems to be the outlier as the bulk of the polling shows Boxer with a double digit lead. The most recent poll, a Daily Kos/R2K poll has Boxer up 52-31.

That is not to say that this will be an easy fight for Sen. Boxer, as Fiorina can come at her with wads of self-infused cash. So, she will still need plenty of support. And plus, Fiorina has a ton of experience in planting bugs and tapping phones. So, we’ll have to use the super decoder rings to talk about the campaign amongst us Democrats.

You can find Sen. Boxer on the Calitics ActBlue Page.

UPDATE: The SJ Merc has a story on the race. It's more blather about how Fiorina is going to give a tough race.  But for another perspective, check out Josh Treviño's tweets. Treviño, a conservative blogger and strategist, is a huuuuge Chuck DeVore fan, and seems rather pissed that Sen. Cornyn and the NRSC pushed Fiorina into the race.  My favorite tweet:  

This always bears repeating: Carly Fiorina was the only person fired by the ’08 McCain campaign for incompetence. Think about that.9 minutes ago from TweetDeck

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Walters tries to weaken Boxer

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Ye ole curmudgeon decided to level his sights on Sen. Barbara Boxer today and discuss her re-election chances.  He starts out with this lede:

California’s U.S. senators tend to fall into two categories – headline-grabbers and dependable workhorses for the state’s interests.

Headline grabbers…hmm that would have to be Sen. Feinstein, who relishes her self-designated role of wise moderate woman, that determines what is or is not a deal.

Somehow, I think that Walters meant it the other way around.  He references “quixotic political frays” that have “nothing to do with California”.  Then of course he never gives any examples, leaving the reader to either scratch their head, or trust the wise man of the column.

Walters then brings up the Rasmussen poll from a few weeks ago, which was unsurprising.  Like most years Boxer looks vulnerable, tempting the Republicans to throw the kitchen sink to unseat her.

This year the national Republican hierarchy are excited about Carly Fiorina, who gets 41 to Boxer’s 45 in the matchup.  Of course she has to get past movement conservative Chuck DeVore in the primary.  Fiorina’s primary is not a shoe-in.  It would not be all that surprising to see DeVore win the wingnut vote that dominates Republican primaries.  Fiorina will have to dump a ton of cash into the primary to hold DeVore off.

Walters then does his best to weaken Boxer by providing only half of her favorability numbers.

The latest poll, true to form, found Boxer’s overall job approval rating among California voters to be fairly low, with just 21 percent holding a “very favorable” view, down six points from March.

When one normally writes about favorability numbers you add up the very favorable and somewhat favorable results to come up with an overall favorability number.  In this case, according to this Rasmussen poll, she has a 21% very favorable and a 36% somewhat favorable, for an overall 57% favorabilty rating, which while not great isn’t nearly as bad as Walters tries to make it seem.

If Fiorina wins the primary then Boxer will likely have a tougher race in 2010, certainly compared to 2004.  We need to be prepared to defend her with all guns blazing.  Fiorina certainly comes with a lot of baggage that would be great fodder for blog posts and attack ads.

There are no huge alarm bells ringing right now, no matter what Walters has written, but we need to be on alert and watch closely as we move into election season.  Early cash is better than late cash.  Give via ActBlue.