Have you noticed how “Independent” potential “third-party” candidate Howard Schultz has been more critical of Democrats than of Republicans or trump? According to Greg Sargent, that’s a feature, not a bug:
The key revelation from The Post is that there is a deliberate method behind Schultz’s devotion of so much of his free-media tour to attacking Democrats. As The Post reports, this represents “a core strategy his advisers have developed in recent months through extensive polling”:
To win a majority of electoral college votes, which Schultz says would be his goal, he would have to ultimately replace the Democratic nominee as the favored choice of voters who do not want Trump to win a second term.
In practice, this has led Schultz to focus far more of his initial fire on Democrats than Trump … He has particularly focused on attacking the Democratic Party’s more-liberal wing.
Any viable route for Schultz requires, first and foremost, an aggressive effort to split the majority of Americans who have already concluded Trump’s presidency is a failure, or worse, a rolling disaster.
Even though his coalition would seem to be moderates, and as much as he claims he wants to address poverty, he’s already resisted the idea of raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and wants to curtail “entitlements” instead. To him, it’s not the role of billionaires to help lift up society as a whole. Nor is it the role of government to provide basic services for its populace. Sargent again:
Thus, Schultz must cast greater taxation on extremely high income and wealth to fund truly universal health care and higher education as a threat equivalent to — or more worthy of attention than — that posed by four more years of Trump/GOP climate denial and xenophobic nationalism, and Trump’s staggering incompetence.
That’s his strategy — to portray raising taxes as more horrific than trump. Brian Beutler expands on this:
Schultz is just one billionaire, but he’s standing in here for a small but astonishingly powerful class of individuals who whose actions over the past two-plus years belie the sincerity of their anti-Trump comments. Schultz, like other public-facing billionaires, may genuinely believe that Trump is unacceptably racist and incompetent, but he and they also apparently believe that the only thing worse than a catastrophe like Trump is a tax level high enough restore public faith in the American political system.
[…] Schultz’s candidacy is a counterpoint to corporate America’s winking complicity with Trump’s agenda. It’s a warning from donors to Democrats not to respond to Trumpism with an appeal to working-class solidarity—a threat to boobytrap the applecart if Democrats promise to upset it.
Schultz’ speculative entry is an attempt to coerce extort Democrats into abandoning efforts to address inequality of opportunity and income by taking baby steps toward leveling the field via progressive taxation.
What should Democrats do? I think they should ignore him. He won’t try to compete as a Democrat because he knows his platform is un-Democratic. He’s nothing more than a rich Libertarian — he’s a greedy, selfish rich guy who thinks gay marriage and environmental protections are OK as long as they don’t cost him any money.
The media has given Schultz far more airtime than he deserves — he’s not a candidate, just “thinking about it” — and they all want to know what Dems think. The only proper response is “I don’t care — he’s just another trickle-down plutocrat who thinks raising taxes would be worse than another trump term. The American people disagree.” Beutler again:
Democrats will spare themselves a lot of heartache by if they can remain clear eyed about how the Schultz class has really responded to Trump’s victory. To avoid scaring off donors, some of them will be tempted to treat the members of this moneyed elite as if they are, by and large, allies in the fight rather than opportunists. But Schultz and his supporters have taken themselves out of the fold. To continue to reward them with policy concessions would be worse than a betrayal. It would communicate to the whole coalition that doing what’s necessary to beat Trump isn’t worth a bit of affliction for the comfortable. The fracture would spread like a crack in a windshield. If Democrats don’t learn to welcome the hatred of the plutocrats, we will either be stuck with Trump, or his movement will come roaring back in four years to take on a governing party that will have nothing to show for itself.
This is exactly right — Democrats must welcome the hatred of the plutocrats. It’s the only way to defeat not just trump in 2020, but all the billionaires with overly-inflated assessments of their own qualifications for the Presidency.
Updating to add what Starbucks employees are being instructed to say about Schultz:
The scripted reply doesn’t sit well with all employees:
Another Starbucks employee said that management at her store had rephrased the Schultz instructions ― and did so in a way that bothered her.
“We were told not to talk to customers about it,” said the employee, who added that workers were told that “if we are asked about his political goals or our opinions on it that we’re to say he was a great CEO to work for but that’s where our opinions end.”
The rephrased instructions irked the employee, who saw them as part of a pattern of stifling employees’ opinions. The shift supervisor felt similarly about the written instructions, finding it frustrating that Schultz was able to publicly discuss his politics when he worked at Starbucks while they were not.
Let’s remember that baristas are employees and not put them in an awkward spot by asking them about Schultz!
I’ve read a few comments that recommend boycotting Starbucks. Even though Schultz probably has a hefty chunk of stock, an effective boycott would probably hurt local workers more than it would Schultz, IMO. You do you 😊