"Blogfather" Kaus vs. Barbara Boxer for Senate

Mickey Kaus, one of the two or three bloggers who got me hooked on reading political blogs (way back during the Gray Davis recall) is running against our long-time senator, Barbara Boxer, in the Democratic primary. It's kind of a David Vs. Goliath contest, so she doesn't think she needs to show up for debates. Too bad, because he seems much more sensible and intellectually engaged than Boxer - not one of my favorite politicians.

Kaus deserves the "blogfather" title. He seems to be a fairly moderate Democrat on most issues. He doesn't like corruption. He has some creative ideas sometimes. I have had a hard time following his Slate blog, Kausfiles, more recently, because it was his habit to keep adding new material to each daily post as the day wore on, and I lost track of earlier points he'd made. In recent years, I have generally only read his work when someone linked it.

He leaves a good general impression with me. But even if by some miracle he won the primary, I'd have a hard time voting for a Democrat in California, because the party machine in this state is so corrupt. I'm not real excited about the primaries, so far. Time to do some serious study, I think.

Update: Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman won the Republican primaries for senate and governor. Heard Fiorina today on Dennis Prager's show. She sounded genuine and reasonable. I'm not totally happy with the way the primaries turned out - campaign finance rules have intimidated people who would otherwise give money to candidates to get their messages out. As it now stands, races are dominated by dinosaurs and zillionaires. A referendum for an open primary passed. A similar set-up in Louisiana seemed to contribute to corruption.

Mickey Kaus, with a budget of $40,000 and a very short campaign, took 5% of the vote away from Barbara Boxer. He's still trying to make some things clear to the electorate. A few decades ago, there were many more sensible Democrats like him.

Postmortem: What did he accomplish and what did he learn? Interview with Glenn Reynolds. He opposed unions, especially teacher's unions and other public unions, and immediate amnesty. Teacher's unions were the most unpopular of his "target institutions" with the people he spoke to.