Barbara Boxer Is Ready To Take Carly Fiorina Down

Barbara Boxer, Democratic darling of the U.S. Senate, is taking new aim at an old foe: freshly-chosen Imaginary Vice President Carly Fiorina. In the wake of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz announcing Fiorina as his VP pick, Boxer has apparently awakened to fight the former Hewlett-Packard CEO once more. For those unaware of their contentious history, Boxer vs. Fiorina goes way back (okay, at least six years). Fiorina ran against the popular California senator back in 2010. She did not do well. Specifically, Fiorina lost to Boxer by double digits. Fiorina also called Boxer’s hair “so yesterday," so you know it was really on.

As the running mate of fictional presidential candidate Ted Cruz, Fiorina is supposed to hit the trail and fight for his campaign — but it’s Boxer who’s definitely gotten in the most shots so far, firing off a series of tweets in the last 24 hours about what a disaster Fiorina has been in the past and will continue to be in the future. Fiorina’s only gotten in one quick counterpunch as of this writing, but I suppose this is still an early round of what we can expect to be escalating shade as we get closer to the all-important California primary on June 7. As her Twitter fire proves, although Boxer has chosen to retire when her current term is up in 2016, by no means is she going quietly into that good night.

The fresh beef was served as follows:

And later, as though an afterthought:

Cruz no longer has a path to an uncontested nomination, which means he and Fiorina need to do very, very well in California — which awards 172 Republican delegates — if he’s to stop Donald Trump from getting the nomination outright. Cruz trails Trump with 546 delegates to his 953. He also trails Trump in the Golden State, with 28 to 43.6 percent in the polls. So the time for Fiorina to be in attack mode is now. Unfortunately for her and TrusTed, her attacks don't land nearly as hard as Boxer's. Fiorina appeared on Fox & Friends today and responded to the fourth tweet:

“The merger was Compaq was the most successful merger in high-tech history,” Fiorina said. “It saved a company and created 80,000 jobs. But not that Barbara Boxer would understand that, since all she’s ever done is be a professional politician, and she has been disastrous for the state of California and thank goodness she’s retiring.”

To be fair to Fiorina, the jury is still out on what her final legacy as CEO of Hewlett-Packard will be. Bloomberg's Justin Fox may have gotten it best when he wrote last year, "Carly Fiorina was not the greatest CEO in corporate history. But she certainly wasn’t the worst, either."

However, there is far less dispute about Boxer's record in politics. I would venture that most Californians would disagree with Fiorina's assessment that Boxer was "disastrous." Boxer was such a disaster that fighting for environmental conservation and women’s rights only earned her 30+ years in Congress, including four consecutive terms as senator. Maybe at this point, Fiorina should quit swinging.