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.

But, in today’s column entitled “Carly Fiorina’s Senate campaign an uninspiring product launch” in the LA Times, Michael Hiltzik does just that. Let’s start with the broad stuff.

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.

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Chuck DeVore is still an unknown to most Californians, and Carly Fiorina is only slightly more recognized.  However, it seems that amongst Republican right-wingers, Chuck DeVore might as well be Madonna; they just love him.

Tea party activists are also lining up behind challengers to GOP establishment-backed Senate candidates in Colorado and Connecticut. In California, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina – like Crist, another National Republican Senatorial Committee-favored Senate contender – is the target of tea party animus in her primary against conservative state Assemblyman Chuck DeVore.

“My impression is that the support among tea partyers for DeVore is high,” said Mark Meckler, a California-based organizer for Tea Party Patriots. “I hear nothing but praise for the guy.”  (Politico)

Now, you have to separate the two tea party factions. You have the faction that is run by the rich and powerful, that one is led by my former congressman, Dick Armey.  But however they are bringing these folks, there is another part of it, that is pretty much your old Republican grassroots. Not much has really changed here, but some of the branding.  So, the right-wingers are all abuzz with the hunk of burning electability that is Chuck DeVore.  In case you don’t know much about him, perhaps we should trust those who know him best, the right-wingers: He’s a far right ideologue. Surely that will sway California’s center-left electorate.

Meanwhile over in Camp Carlyfornia, we have Carly’s turn to get beaten up with the facts that she isn’t particularly interested in voting.  Fiorina has a stunning 5 for 18 record since 2000.  Clearly, she believes in civic engagement.

But don’t worry, she’s found an issue that she can use to curry favor with the base: West Central Valley water. Carlyfornia’s op-ed in the Fresno Bee takes the Sean Hannity line, you know the one where farmers rool and fisherman drool! Boooooo salmon!!

The logic of the editorial is truly stunning though.

Common sense would tell us that it shouldn’t take an act of Congress to put the urgent needs of people ahead of a small fish. Apparently it does. … Congress tried to act the week before my visit to the Valley, however, Senate Democrats — led by Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer — defeated a California water amendment offered by South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint. This amendment should be reconsidered and approved. (FresnoBee)

The DeMint (R-South Carolina) amendment would have banned water diversions from farms in the state of California for the purposes of saving endangered species. Never mind that even Sen. Feinstein thinks this is none of his business, the fact is that ignoring one fish isn’t really the way to solve important problems. It is this kind of short-term thinking: use whatever resources we have at hand, that has led us to the dangerous situation with climate change.

I recommend that Carlyfornia take a look at the story of DDT in Borneo.  You soon begin to realize that nature is a delicate balance. You can’t simply take out one player and expect the house of cards to remain in place.  In the case of Borneo, DDT was used to reduce malaria, but ended up creating a series of local extinctions that threatened the way of life of Borneo. In the end, the WHO had to airlift cats into the island to save the ecosystem and the way of life for real human beings there.

But, what would a CEO really need to know about systemic analysis. I mean, the Compaq deal went great, right?

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.

In 2006, the Schwarzenegger campaign uncorked an ad almost immediately after the primaries showing Phil Angelides walking backwards, the assumption being that he would take the state backwards as well.  One of the ads liberally quoted Angelides’ rival for the Democratic nomination, Steve Westly, using the bruising primary against the winner.  “What if Steve Westly was right?” the announcer says, after citing Westly’s rhetoric in claiming that Angelides favored $10 billion in new taxes.  Steve Westly wrote most of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s early strategy and even his campaign spots, as Angelides was defined by his opponent swiftly.

Steve Poizner basically bestowed the same gift on eMeg Whitman over the weekend.  The ads about Whitman’s failure to register to vote for 28 years write themselves, but Poizner took the liberty of making the ad.  If Republicans know how to do one thing well, it’s go hard negative, and this ad will probably be very effective to the GOP primary audience.  It will also be effective as a “here’s what Republicans say about Meg Whitman” ad next year, should see prevail in the primary.  Poizner actually reiterated his call for Whitman to drop out of the race “for the good of the party” over the weekend at the Republican convention in Indian Wells.  The issue received major pickup throughout the media.  

And Whitman did herself no favors at all with some of the worst damage control you’ll see in politics, as she repeated like a mantra this line about how “there is no excuse for my voting record,” completely avoiding any specifics about why.  If she manages to win the primary, expect to hear this audio right through to next November.  It’s cringe-worthy.

I’m guessing the Republican Governor’s Association just tried to pull back their invitation to Meg Whitman to come to any of their gala events.

This is terrible crisis management, of course.  And it suggests that the general election would be no kinder on eMeg.  But it’s not like the split in the US Senate race, with serial non-voter Carlyfornia going up against wingnut conservative Chuck DeVore (The LA Times gets this wrong by trying to impose a blanket comparison).  The Yacht Party grassroots has figured out that they have no candidate in the Republican primary, and regardless of who wins they probably won’t be all that excited to work for the top of the ticket.

For activists such as Mike Spence, past president of the conservative California Republican Assembly, such centrist talk inspires unease following what they said was Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s betrayal of the Republican base.

Spence called the Republican governor a failure and blasted him for breaking his promises to conservatives by, among other things, approving the biggest tax increase in state history earlier this year. Schwarzenegger has also championed traditionally liberal causes such as Assembly Bill 32, which requires the state to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by about 25 percent by 2020.

“After the governor, people are cautious about who they support,” Spence said.

Of course, this could be true of the Democratic grassroots as well, depending on circumstances.  I think the only certainty in next year’s elections will be the low turnout, as a slice of both sides stay home for their own reasons.  But the Yacht Party’s cast of characters look particularly uninspiring.

The DSCC has put out a little web video with Carly Fiorina “in her own words.”

So, long story short, she ran HP into the ground and now wants to bring that business acumen to the Senate.

Any takers? Any takers?

No, I didn’t think so.

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!

If we’re going to have to deal with eMeg, then we also must contend with iCarly (and anyone with sons, daughters, nieces or nephews knows the reference).  Weeks into her brave transition from failed CEO and failed Presidential campaign surrogate into the bold new world of failed Seante candidate, Carly Fiorina has hit a snag in the form of her extremely dicey past:

Over the past dozen years, Hewlett-Packard has sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of printers and other products to Iran through a Middle East distributor, sidestepping a U.S. ban on trade with the country.

Now the person who headed HP for much of that time, Carly Fiorina, is ramping up to run for U.S. Senate. And questions are emerging about what Fiorina knew about HP’s growing presence in Iran during her six-year tenure at the Silicon Valley firm from 1999 to 2005 […]

Fiorina, a Republican who is gearing up to challenge three-term Democratic incumbent Sen. Barbara Boxer in 2010, declined an interview request. But she issued a statement through her campaign spokeswoman saying that she was unaware of any sales to Iran during her time at the company.

“It is illegal for American companies to do business in Iran,” the spokeswoman, Beth Miller, wrote. “To her knowledge, during her tenure, HP never did business in Iran and fully complied with all U.S. sanctions and laws.”

iCarly’s stock response when questioned about her awful tenure at Hewlett-Packard is to say that she was unaware of the misdeeds and only aware of the deeds.  For someone running on her success as a go-go CEO, that’s a curious position to take, that she didn’t know about large chunks of HP’s business.  Especially when the evidence has been clear for years that HP products found their way into Iran, with their printers becoming “nearly ubiquitous there,” according to a Boston Globe report.  HP has finally gotten around to severing their relationship with a Dubai-based distributor which clearly funneled their products into Iran.  That distributor worked for HP throughout iCarly’s tenure.

This is fun:

One former federal trade enforcement official said HP’s dealings with the country are ripe for further investigation. If Fiorina or other HP employees based in the United States were aware that HP products were being resold to Iran, they could face fines or even prosecution for violating the trade embargo, said Mike Turner, former director of the Office of Trade Enforcement at the U.S. Department of Commerce.

“If I was still sitting in my chair today,” said Turner, who retired as head of the enforcement agency two years ago, “I’d be looking at who at HP had knowledge of this and when did they develop that knowledge.”

I actually appreciate iCarly entering the race.  It would be so boring watching Chuck DeVore play the Washington Generals to Barbara Boxer’s Harlem Globetrotters.  iCarly will add a dash or two of corporate failure, espionage, illegal trade practices and possible indictment, all the while giving the state economy a stimulus by spending all her money in defeat.

There have been successful and unsuccesful campaign launches on display over the past few years.  You had Obama’s enormously successful speech in Springfield. On the minus side, well, let’s not rub it in.

Anyway, Carly Fiorina officially launched her exploratory campaign yesterday, and let’s just say that she was met with a slew of questions you generally don’t want to get at the start of the campaign. Let’s start with Carla Marinucci’s Citizenship Test:

Critics suggest maybe not, considering that Fiorina, 54, who has a spotty voting California voting record, never cast a ballot in two other states where she lived previously, according to public records.

Officials in Morris County, N.J., said records show she registered to vote there in 1997 but did not vote in a single election and was dropped from the voter rolls in 2005 as inactive.

Before that, Fiorina lived in Montgomery County, Md., where the registrar’s office said they reviewed state databases and found no listing of Fiorina’s voter registration.

Fiorina strongly disputes the voting records as “just wrong,” her spokeswoman, Beth Miller, said. Miller said Tuesday that Fiorina has no records to prove her past voting record and has acknowledged her failure to vote in some elections. But while “she didn’t vote all the time … she did vote,” the spokeswoman added. (SF Chronicle 8/19/09)

As I said, questions from a major newspaper reporter about whether you voted in the past are really not the way you want to start a campaign. From the word go, her spokesman is on the defensive about just exactly why she wants to win this gig.  After all, this really goes to the heart of the race. If you really care so much about the future of the nation, why not bother to at least vote?

And over at the LA Times, the quick blurb about her candidacy was finished with the following:

Her personal wealth would make Fiorina a heavy favorite for the Republican nomination. But she would have a tough fight to unseat Boxer, a Democrat seeking a fourth term. And Fiorina is opposed to abortion, which puts her at odds with most California voters.

Fiorina was fired from Hewlett-Packard after a rocky tenure. (LA Times 8/19/09)

Ouch. Now, if you were starting off a campaign, and that’s the close of the story on you, basically calling you a failure, you’d have to consider that a flop. Poor Carly.

I’d call that a resounding “wah-wha.” (P.s. I love the internet. I found the sound from Super Mario brothers in like 4 seconds.)