2010 California Senate Primary

Here's the US senate candidates for the democratic party in the 2010 California Primary:

• Barbara Boxer: No way I vote for her again. She's completely dropped the ball on reducing military spending. Consider her poor (for a democrat) 60% rating for 2009 from Peace Action West: their report is here. Most notably she voted against a proposal by John McCain to reduce purchases of the entirely useless F-22. National security is under way more threat from our appalling federal deficit than it is from a lack of overpriced fighter jets. She (along with Feinstein) gotta go.
• Brian Quintana: Website is full of usual platitudes. "More funding for this", "more funding for that". Yadda yadda. "More funding" isn't something which is available when you're battling a $1.5T deficit. Let's see some 2010-compliant positions.
• Micky Kaus: Gee, the guy doesn't even have his own dedicated URL. But he's willing to go against the party line, which I like. Kaus gets my vote.

And on the Republican side:

• Carly Fiorina: After a failed career tenure at HP, she feels she's now qualified for a promotion to US Senate. She's way too Tea Party for me. She's for "cutting waste". Every candidate ever to run for office has been for cutting anonymous waste. But tell me what jobs are going to be cut, what incomes are going to be reduced, what services are going to be denied. I'm all for cutting waste: I'm a big supporter. But talk is cheap and worth the same as long as you refuse to take any hard positions. And a $1.5T deficit isn't going to come down without a serious look at the revenue side. Sorry.
• Tom Campell: I have a lot of respect for Tom, who was an excellent representative from the San Francisco Bay area. He received tenure as a Law professor at Stanford, and before that received a PhD in economics. On top of that, I trust his integrity. He's got exactly the mindset we need to address the US deficit, and refuses to take these obscene "no new taxes" pledges the Tea Party gets in a froth about. He's also considered by his party to be a social liberal, which means he's a social moderate: for example, he supports gay marriage. One-up against Boxer or Quintana, I vote for Tom, despite his being too pro-military for my preference. The serious issue is he lacks the financial resources of Fiorina, who is polling ahead within the party. However, he polls better against Boxer than Fiorina does, so hopefully the Republicans will see the light and support the better candidate.
• Chuck DeVore: I need look no further than these three words from his website: "common sense conservative". Next...

So as a registered Democrat, I vote for Kaus. But if he loses, I vote for Campbell in the general if he wins the nomination. Otherwise, in the general I vote for Kaus if he wins the Democratic primary, but otherwise in the general I support the Green candidate, Duane Roberts.

Boxer fails my "natural selection" rule for candidates. If you fail, you are out, independent who's going to replace you. Then if they fail, they're out, too. Eventually you get a good candidate. But if you compromise on this position, and vote in someone who clearly lacks integrity only because you don't like the opponent, you guarantee that corruption continues and money rules.