{"id":11502,"date":"2010-04-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-11T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-04-10T18:45:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-10T18:45:00","slug":"cdp-slaps-down-mickey-kaus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2010\/04\/11\/cdp-slaps-down-mickey-kaus\/","title":{"rendered":"CDP Slaps Down Mickey Kaus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mickey Kaus, a right-wing blogger and self-described “not going to win” candidate for the Democratic nomination to the US Senate, is throwing a temper tantrum<\/a> because he’s not going to be offered a chance to speak at next weekend’s California Democratic Party convention in Los Angeles. The best coverage is from TBogg<\/a>:<\/p>\n

If Carly Carlyfiorinafornia’s Senate campaign is a twenty-car pile-up involving a tractor-trailer loaded with demon sheep, then the equally quixotic Senatorial campaign of Mickey Kaus is a fender-bender between two Ford Escorts in a Big Lots parking lot. It fails the Rubberneck test.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

TBogg helpfully examines the correspondence between Kaus and CDP Executive Director Shawnda Westly about whether Kaus would be given a place in the program to speak to the delegates from the stage. Westly explained that “all four state officers” of the CDP – including Chair John Burton – agreed that Kaus’s candidacy did not meet the “viability” rules for allowing a Democratic candidate to speak.<\/p>\n

On what basis did they reach that conclusion? Why, all they had to do was look at Kaus’s own words, as Shawnda explained to Kaus:<\/p>\n

All four statewide officers agreed on the question of your campaign’s viability – based in part on statements that you had made to the press on that very topic – and forwarded their recommendations to the Chairman. One of the quotes was from an article you sent to us as part of your endorsement request on March 23rd.<\/p>\n

* “I do not expect to win, and that is the difference between Franken and me.” (New York Times Magazine, March 14, 2010)<\/p>\n

* “‘I’m not going to win, don’t worry about it,’ he told one guest, who was reluctant to sign. Others were assured that they could still vote for Boxer in the fall.” (LA Weekly, March 11, 2010)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, the CDP leadership – rightly – decided that there was no reason to let someone running a vanity campaign use the party’s stage to promote himself. As an elected CDP delegate and member of the state Executive Board, I wholly endorse and support the decision of the leadership on this matter.<\/p>\n

Especially since Kaus’s dedication to Democratic values is, well, nonexistent. He claims to be a “lifelong Democrat” but has spent his career attacking core Democratic constituencies such as labor unions and immigrants. What Kaus apparently willfully forgets is that unions and immigrants have been a core part of the party since the 1830s<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

One would think that Kaus should just do the obvious thing and join the Republicans, but then that would mean he has to drop his ridiculous “I’m a Democrat embarrassed by my own party because they’re not a bunch of wingnuts like me” shtick. I for one am glad he won’t be spewing that nonsense from the stage of the CDP convention. Let’s reserve that for actual Democrats, please.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mickey Kaus, a right-wing blogger and self-described “not going to win” candidate for the Democratic nomination to the US Senate, is throwing a temper tantrum<\/a> because he’s not going to be offered a chance to speak at next weekend’s California Democratic Party convention in Los Angeles. The best coverage is from TBogg<\/a>:<\/p>\n

If Carly Carlyfiorinafornia’s Senate campaign is a twenty-car pile-up involving a tractor-trailer loaded with demon sheep, then the equally quixotic Senatorial campaign of Mickey Kaus is a fender-bender between two Ford Escorts in a Big Lots parking lot. It fails the Rubberneck test.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

TBogg helpfully examines the correspondence between Kaus and CDP Executive Director Shawnda Westly about whether Kaus would be given a place in the program to speak to the delegates from the stage. Westly explained that “all four state officers” of the CDP – including Chair John Burton – agreed that Kaus’s candidacy did not meet the “viability” rules for allowing a Democratic candidate to speak.<\/p>\n

On what basis did they reach that conclusion? Why, all they had to do was look at Kaus’s own words, as Shawnda explained to Kaus:<\/p>\n

All four statewide officers agreed on the question of your campaign’s viability – based in part on statements that you had made to the press on that very topic – and forwarded their recommendations to the Chairman. One of the quotes was from an article you sent to us as part of your endorsement request on March 23rd.<\/p>\n

* “I do not expect to win, and that is the difference between Franken and me.” (New York Times Magazine, March 14, 2010)<\/p>\n

* “‘I’m not going to win, don’t worry about it,’ he told one guest, who was reluctant to sign. Others were assured that they could still vote for Boxer in the fall.” (LA Weekly, March 11, 2010)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, the CDP leadership – rightly – decided that there was no reason to let someone running a vanity campaign use the party’s stage to promote himself. As an elected CDP delegate and member of the state Executive Board, I wholly endorse and support the decision of the leadership on this matter.<\/p>\n

Especially since Kaus’s dedication to Democratic values is, well, nonexistent. He claims to be a “lifelong Democrat” but has spent his career attacking core Democratic constituencies such as labor unions and immigrants. What Kaus apparently willfully forgets is that unions and immigrants have been a core part of the party since the 1830s<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

One would think that Kaus should just do the obvious thing and join the Republicans, but then that would mean he has to drop his ridiculous “I’m a Democrat embarrassed by my own party because they’re not a bunch of wingnuts like me” shtick. I for one am glad he won’t be spewing that nonsense from the stage of the CDP convention. Let’s reserve that for actual Democrats, please.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1990],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1990"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-2Zw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}