For the love of Pat Buchanan eating Kasha Varnishkes at Ben’s Kosher Delicatessen in Boca Raton in 2000, can we all just relax about the impact Howard Schultz will have on American politics? If he runs for president as an Independent in 2020, he is not going to cost the Democrats the election — any more than Jill Stein cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 decision.
More on Stein in a moment.
For now, though, let’s stop cutting up pieces of cardboard for “F*** Starbucks” posters and checking out flights to company headquarters in Seattle for the impromptu rallies.
Howard Schultz is a far better human being and would be a far better president on his worst day than Donald Trump is on his best one — and Trump doesn’t have a lot of good days — so the characterization that both are rich, out of touch billionaires who see the presidency as a bauble is a pretty lazy construct, in part because Trump isn’t a billionaire and Schultz isn’t insane. Schultz, no matter how many times of late you’ve wanted to throw a Black and White Mocha Frappuccino® at him, isn’t worth the hand-wringing and derision. Trump got rich, if he is, snookering banks, investors, and contractors, while Schultz came upon his fortune because Americans were willing to pay $4.95 for coffee with whipped milk, a drizzle of caramel, and chocolate shavings. Creating and riding such a model to such wealth (and letting that success and wealth go to his head) doesn’t make Schultz presidential material, but it also doesn’t make him a punchline. Don’t hate him because you were too lazy the last 30 years to brew your own decaf.
It’s not like he’s without charm.
The billionaire head of the Seattle-based chain penned a rare open letter to America on Tuesday, Jan. 29, stopping short of a full gun ban but instead making a “respectful request” that coffee lovers keep their firearms out of his stores.
Okay, it ain’t much, but it ain’t nothing.
Back to Stein, though. The notion that a majority of her supporters — the approximate 130,000 throughout Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (more than enough to overcome Trump’s count in those three states ) — would have supported Clinton, thus giving her the election, if only Stein were not on the ballot is as fatuous as it is delusional. Stein supporters wouldn’t have supported Clinton if she were running against a thrice-married, megalomaniacal, lying, bankrupt carny with ties to the Russian mob.
Okay, bad example.
And Schultz’ supporters, wherever they are (and other than Steve Schmidt, where are they?) don’t have that kind of passion and humorless ratf**kery. Fact is, Schultz simply doesn’t and will never have the numbers of supporters to throw the election to Trump, as, say, Beto O’Rourke or Elizabeth Warren would if they ran as a third party candidate.
He is maddening, though.
“I respect the Democratic Party. I no longer feel affiliated because I don’t know their views represent the majority of Americans. I don’t think we want a 70% income tax in America,” Schultz told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin in New York.
Oh, knock it off. Schultz knows how a graduated income tax works and that nobody within the sound of his voice — unless he’s in a crowded room in Davos right now — has to worry about the portion of their income that will be taxed at that amount. This was a cheap shot aimed at … well, I don’t know who. The anti-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sentiment in America will not be the deciding factor in 2020.
Still, let Schultz run and stop hocking him about it. Maybe he’ll have something to offer to the national conversation. I doubt it, but who knows? By the time October 2020 rolls around, by the time the CEO in him realizes that wooing voters at the state caucus in Wyoming is not like wooing Starbucks’ regional sales managers at a conference in Vegas, he’ll have the support of about 19 people nationally. And when it’s all over, and the history of the 2020 election is written, Howard Schultz will be an asterisk inside a parenthetical. He may, in fact, be an egotistical billionaire bastard asshole, but he is not going to cost Democrats the 2020 presidential election.
Only Democrats will do that.
Barry Friedman is a comedian in Tulsa, Okla., and blogs at FriedmanOfThePlains.com, where this appeared.
From The Progressive Populist, March 1, 2019
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us
PO Box 819, Manchaca TX 78652