Undecided 2010 Progress Report: Cut and Spend
What’s new on the campaign trail? Quite a bit.
The Race to Replace Arnold: CA Gov 2010
Meg Whitman kicked up the heat in August, and her campaign’s political moves have paid off. Mot recently, Whitman has planted Jerry Brown (the Patron Saint of California Democrats) against the Patron Saint of American Democrats: Bill Clinton. It all started in April of 1992 when Clinton, or actually CNN, criticized Brown of raising taxes in California and getting no economic benefit from it (as he exited the office of Governor with a deficit).
In a campaign speech in LA, Brown discussed the ad, in an attempt to further slam the character of Meg Whitman, and ended up criticizing Bill Clinton for lying about his tax record, and being untrustworthy during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Brown apologized later, but by then the gas had hit the fire.
In the PAC game, the US Chamber of Commerce has entered the governors race against Jerry Brown aiming to lampoon his work as AG with a quote asserting his thousands of lawsuits against businesses in California.
Most recent polling on the Whitman-Brown race has Whitman leading Brown 48% to 46% (CNN/TIME).
The Race to Box-out Boxer: CA-US Senate Seat 2010
It’s dead heat for the US Senate seat here in California. Boxer launched her first ad campaign of the Senate campaign. The ad campaign aims to bring to light her help to Veterans, clean energy and small business tax breaks and cuts. Fiorina has also started to shift her perception of Congress’s small business bill as she is supporting the tax breaks afforded to small businesses.
The US Chamber of Commerce also entered this race last week with ads targetting Boxer’s lack of funding and support for Valley and San Diego water.
The most recent polling shows Boxer leading Fiorina 48% to 44% (CNN/TIME).
Commentary
This week seems to turn the tide for the White House along with House and Senate Democrats in which they’ve realized that the way to get voters is to call for, like the Republicans, tax breaks and cuts.
In the White House, President Obama is taking aim at Minority Leader John Boehner as a way to eliminate conservative dissidence in the campaign trail. Essentially, the White House is countering a bonfire of Conservative values with a Zippo lighter. House Republicans have called for a continuation of the Bush Tax Cuts, while Obama continues to slam a new tax break down their throats as reparations.
Even on the campaign trail, as evidenced by Brown and Boxer, Democrats are pushing to show how their contributions to lower taxation make them any different to their conservative counterparts. The answer Republicans have responded with, like Whitman, is that while they claim they’ve fought for lower taxation, the high spending of Democrats has led the nation or state into a high deficit.
Essentially, the message for the week from campaigning Democrats is: taxing less = more independent voters.
