With Barbara Boxer a No-Show, Mickey Kaus Debates an Actual Box

Photo courtesy of www.stephenkausblog.com

California has no shortages of bizarre political narratives this election season. There’s are three mega-rich, ex-CEO candidates running for higher office – one of whom has released perhaps the most unintentionally hilarious campaign ad in the history of the universe – and a septuagenerian ex-governor (and son of a governor) trying to reclaim the office one more time.

So there’s already a high bar for weird political shenanigans. But Mickey Kaus might have just surpassed it. The race between Carly Fiorina and Tom Campbell for the GOP Senate nomination is so exciting that people forget that Sen. Barbara Boxer faces a (sort-of) challenge from within her own party: Slate columnist Kaus, a liberal who often takes some decidedly non-liberal stances.

Kaus has been publicly goading Boxer into debating him, and when she didn’t take up the call, Kaus went ahead with the debate, replacing Boxer with a, um, box. Subtle, right?

Though Kaus’s brother Stephen blogged that “Mickey presented a compelling case that as the party that advocates governmental solutions to problems, Democrats have a special responsibility to provide government that works. A government that produced pensions rather than services is going to cause voters to elect Republicans,” it’s hard to imagine how this photo stunt couldn’t make people take Kaus even less seriously.