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Howard Schultz Wants to Be Your Venti, Half-Caf, Vanilla Americano
Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is considering a new location in the West Wing. On Sunday’s “60 Minutes,” the lifelong Democrat outlined a potential run as a “centrist independent” in 2020.
“We’re living at a most fragile time,” Schultz told CBS’s Scott Pelley. “Not only the fact that this President is not qualified to be the president, but the fact that both parties are consistently not doing what’s necessary on behalf of the American people and are engaged every single day in revenge politics.”
“I want to see the American people win. I want to see America win,” Schultz continued. “I don’t care if you’re a Democrat, Independent, Libertarian, Republican. Bring me your ideas. And I will be an independent person who will embrace those ideas because I am not, in any way, in bed with a party.”
Former Obama adviser Bill Burton is joining Schultz’s team, according to Robert Costa of the Washington Post. The vast majority of Democratic officials, however, are terrified about a run from the center.
Julián Castro, a former Housing and Urban Development secretary under President Barack Obama and a contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, urged the former Starbucks CEO not to run.
“I have a concern that if he did run, that, essentially, it would provide [President] Donald Trump with his best hope of getting re-elected,” Castro said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, went further than Castro, tweeting that “vanity projects that help destroy democracy are disgusting.”
“If he enters the race, I will start a Starbucks boycott because I’m not giving a penny that will end up in the election coffers of a guy who will help Trump win,” she said.
…”Given the strong pull of partisanship and the realities of the electoral college system, there is no way an independent can win,” Bloomberg said in a statement. “That is truer today than ever before.”
…Tina Podlodowski, chair of the Washington State Democratic Party, said in a Monday statement that Schultz’s run “isn’t about bringing anyone together” and was “about one person: Howard Schultz.”
Meanwhile, Trump seems to be baiting Schultz to jump into the 2020 race.
Howard Schultz doesn’t have the “guts” to run for President! Watched him on @60Minutes last night and I agree with him that he is not the “smartest person.” Besides, America already has that! I only hope that Starbucks is still paying me their rent in Trump Tower!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 28, 2019
Exit question: Do you think Schultz has a chance?
Published in Elections, Politics
No. But it will sure be fun to watch.
No, but I’m glad to see him run.
Trump showed an outsider can run and win, so I expect we’ll see more businessmen, athletes, Hollywood types, etc. run for President—or Congress—or dogcatcher in local elections. Now, I would never vote for this guy, but I want to see the entrenched elite powers in both parties listen to the voters, especially voters in general.
Trump didn’t win by running as a conservative Republican. For me, his promises would have gotten my vote if he had run as a Democrat.
Think about that. Me—a die-hard Republican conservative—would have voted for Trump no matter what. I don’t think I’m alone, because enough people voted to put Trump in office. Maybe now the new rule is not who (as a candidate) you are or what your personal beliefs and practices are, but what you promise to do once in office.
How refreshing . . .
The first question that comes to my mind is: Why is Schultz any more “qualified to be the president” than Trump is?
Because in the context of Trump, unqualified means I don’t like him.
So, how far left can you go and still get away with calling yourself a centrist?
no chance, but I hope he gets more votes than Ross Perot! How delicious to have Hillary v. Trump v. Schultz in a 3-way.
Maybe he can partner up with Bloomberg as the Billionaire Boys Ticket?
The Dems appear to be concerned about that question, since they assume he will split their vote and not Trump’s.
And those 150 or so remaining centrist Democrat voters he spins off could decide the election.
Interesting that he won’t run as a Democrat.
I never rule anything in or out these days. The conventional wisdom, as I have said on multiple occasions, is no longer operable. We now have Democrats running to the left of Eugene Debs, which would have been instant political death just 25 years ago. And we know the fractured state of the Republican Party.
The problem is, of course, that inevitably the question will arise as to his desires for Congress. What does he urge those who are leaning towards him to do down ticket? Does he split the ticket and urge a Democratic House and a Republican Senate? Does leaning one way or the other on this race or that race alienate enough voters to discount him?
Interesting @stad. I don’t know what I might have done then. But I can sure say what I’d do now. Being a Republican means NADA. That means NOTHING. I doubt I’d believe a word this guy says, because if he meant what he is saying he would be supporting Trump. But I am sure I don’t believe what the Republican Party says either.
He babbles about the public debt like all of them do all of the time. Here is the reality:
The debt to GDP will get worse no matter what. We are better off with Trump.
Don’t forget the 1500 NT’s.
The qualification challenge is a giveaway for cultural elitism. Our government has only the requirement that the person be a certain age (35) and be born in US territory, and be elected by the Americans people. I am politically repulsed by people who don’t honor that.
What is the problem with qualifications? What does that even mean? You have have the imprimatur of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard or what?
However, it’s interesting to see this opening in the (new!) center being exploited.
I don’t know this mans personality but if he not prepared to get viscously attacked if the left considers him a threat, he will be squashed.
But there are a lot of people who are no longer buying into the legacy political paradigm.
Certainly many recent Republicans have squandered credibility, and Democrats have an unmanageable coalition. The only way they can keep unity is to have a hated common enemy.
So Democrats hate this as disruptive of the narrative more than an electoral threat.
Now there’s a sickening mental image that will take quite a bit of alcohol to eradicate . Ewwww!!!🤢🤢🤢
Did Starbucks?
Now one for you.
I imagine his campaign slogan will be, “Free Restrooms for Everyone!” That has worked out so well for Starbucks.
It is also worth noting that Schultz, being a Jew, if he runs as an independent and takes votes from the Democrat candidate, is likely to stoke the fires of anti-Semitism that are already burning quite hot in the Democrat party.
Run, Shultzy, Run!
He looks orange in that photo. That couldn’t hurt.
My father was a die-hard Humphrey Democrat. And he hated Dick Nixon. For six months in 1972 he went around the house chanting:
Don’t change Dicks in the middle of a screw,
Vote for Nixon in ’72.
Taking his old advice I’d vote for Trump again, too.
It is impossible to shoot holes in that article. That’s probably why no one ever talks about it. In my opinion the last chance to get at the root of what that guy is talking about was around 1991 when the Cold War ended. You just can’t have so much centralized power combined with a discretionary Central bank. It’s going to end badly.
I’m not shooting holes in it. In fact I’ve been dying to talk in a wide ranging conversation with anyone who will discuss it, what in the world the Fed, the IMF and the BIS, et al, are doing and why no one objects. And why everyone scoffs at gold and thinks fiat money is sound, and why inflation is good and even necessary, and why the US has to borrow it’s own money and pay interest on it, because as far as I can tell, no one gives a hoot except for those in charge of the country or the world, and for them it all marvelous.
This isn’t the subject of the Post, but getting yourself elected these days is a calculation of how much you’re going to promise the voters for them to elect you and then how you’re going to finance that increase off the remaining tax payers.
I think you’ve said it yourself: we don’t have much chance left, certainly financially speaking if the percent of the voting population that receives from taxpayers tops 50%.
Nothing short of so-called austerity in whatever form is going to save anything in the government that needs saving. Who’s going to do it? Who’s able to do it. I’ll stick with Trump, though he is a Goldman boy. As a counter example, do you think Schultz is ever going to reign in subsidizing wind and solar and electric cars and the new digital monopolies?
But I would like to know more about your views on economics if there’s a way to arrange that.
I meant that rhetorically.
I can probably think of some videos and podcasts. Just to be clear, people that have my point of view, which is likely right in the long run, have been getting killed in the markets. It’s quite hard to understand the hegemonic nature of the dollar and what happens because of it.
Probably a good start is look at the Austrian view of deflation. The statists have turned it into a very scary word, but the reality is you can’t have a pancaking deflation like we had in the depression without prior government and central bank bad policy. Progress means deflation. Your money is supposed to go further, not inflate away. The whole thing is a scam to centralize power and start wars.
Just to be clear, you don’t have to be on the gold standard, you just an honest monetary regime.
The first 16 minutes of this is really good:
I have a feeling this guy is right, but it’s very weird stuff. Free-floating fiat money is such a distortion of reality.
What they do is, they try to fix all of the mess that is been caused by central planning with more central planning. I think the reality is, if we would just socialize a few things more intelligently and then just completely take our thumbs off of everything else, it would heal pretty fast. For a whole bunch of reasons the USA is the best option on this planet.
I thought this was quite a good speech along those lines:
Kevin Williamson always emphasizes the the Democrat party is a collection of interests, not principles. Sometimes they manage it well and sometimes they don’t. Republicans, on paper, are a collection of principles, but they obviously have been lousy conservatives for a long time. Great post.
I just listened to Elizabeth Warren being interviewed by Lawrence O’Donnell on the Hugh Hewitt show. This is exactly what I’m talking about. We have all kinds of social problems and poorly dispersed prosperity because inflationism and central planning quit working decades ago. So what Elizabeth Warren wants is more central planning at the point of a gun with a facilitating police state. This is just nuts. It starts at six minutes. More auditing, global coordination of auditing, arbitrarily seize assets. Turn the funds over to GOSPLAN-D.C. headed by AOC, Elizabeth and Bernie and then they fix everything. LOL
Yep. Apparently voters either don’t care about qualifications, or have a different definition of what “qualified to be President” means . . .