To: Howard Schultz
Tell Howard Schultz to run as a Democrat if he believes he can win
Howard Schultz, if you want to help your country help us defeat the propaganda machine that enables Trump and the worst elements of the Republican Party. Help us push back against corporate interests arrayed against action on climate change. Fund local journalism. Fund scholarships. Fund voter registration and protection. And, if you believe in the case you’d make as an independent candidate, join the Democratic primary and make that case before the voters you'd need to win.
Why is this important?
Howard Schultz came from nothing and built an empire. He tried to align the practices of Starbucks with more civic mindedness than most. He's made it the firm’s mission to hire veterans and refugees. He offered sick leave and college assistance and health plans when so many other American giants exploited economic dislocation and cultural decay to grind their people into the ground. If he wants to run for president, he has every right, and he has a case to make. But there is only one place to make that case, and it’s in the Democratic primaries. The alternative would destroy his legacy as an accomplished executive, divide the country, tilt the presidential election toward Trump, and turn his name into a permanent joke, or worse.
Let’s dive in. A year before the first votes are cast in Iowa, Howard Schultz is assuming that the outcome of that process will be unacceptable. He must believe that a) there are tens of millions of people in America who are clamoring for his politics but b) he couldn’t persuade them to vote for you in a Democratic primary. It’s a real pickle.
So what are his politics? In a 60 Minutes interview, Scott Pelley peppered Schultz with policy questions, and on one after another he described a mainstream Democratic position. On immigration, on climate change, on tax policy, he stake out completely ordinary liberal critiques of Trump. Nothing special, nothing new. So what is this great divergence that suggests that Schultz, a lifelong Democrat, has no choice but to run as an independent?
It’s that even though everyone deserves health care, Democratic proposals are too expensive—Medicare for All is a partisan fantasy, our version of Trump’s wall. It fits with what he's said previously—that neither party cares enough about fiscal responsibility. Earlier this year he told CNBC that “the greatest threat domestically to the country is this $21 trillion debt hanging over… future generations.” This is the substance of his centrism, the appeal he believes will draw the independents he views as his natural constituency—the socially liberal, fiscally conservative political homeless American voter.
But I have bad news: while there are many voters like this who nod their heads in Aspen and Davos, and who form the base of the Democratic donor class and the consultants who share their politics—cosmopolitan, tolerant, capitalist, constitutionally moderate and rarely touched by poverty and grinding inequality—those nodding heads do not represent a coalition. In fact, it’s the opposite. What we have learned in recent years—and why you see a move toward more left policies in Democratic circles —is that the politically homeless voter is opposite to what Schultz describes: fiscally liberal and socially moderate.
There's more to say, including about the shallowness of the identifier “independent” and the 40 percent of voters who use it, the actual source of partisan rancor in Washington, the fact that even on the substance of fiscal responsibility, it’s Democrats who have actually carried that mantle for a generation. And, by the way, on health care, we’re about to have a huge debate about universal coverage and how to pay for it. The debate will take place in the primary Schultz is planning to skip.
Look, I know I’m a partisan Democrat, the kind of person whose views Schultz is training himself to ignore. But in my experience, there’s no one a billionaire trusts more than a fellow billionaire. Listen to Mike Bloomberg who said, “In 2020, the great likelihood is that an independent would just split the anti-Trump vote and end up re-electing the President.” He faced the same choice as Schultz. The only difference is he had people around him who cared more about telling him the truth than taking his money.
The effort to remove Donald Trump from office—by impeachment, resignation, or electoral defeat—is among the most important political fights in American history. The stakes are total. If he is on the ballot in 2020 he will be defeated by Democratic voters, with the help of independents, first-time voters, and some Republicans—or he will be re-elected. A huge percentage of those voters are about to engage in a great contest, state by state, to choose the person we want to face off against Trump. Millions of our fellow citizens will take it seriously, they will knock on doors and persuade their friends, they will argue and think and worry about who they should support. For Howard Schultz to evade that process, for him to introduce so profound an uncertainty into this election, for him to leapfrog the primaries, avoid any debate, insert himself into that decision, simply because he has the money to do it and the foolishness to believe the consultants he's paid to get to yes, is reprehensible.
I believe Schultz loves this country. I believe he believes in a noble conception of his motivations. So my hope is that the criticisms reach him, that he talks to smart people he does not pay, that he does not show the same kind of hubris and selfishness and ego that led Trump to believe he alone could fix it.
Howard Schultz, if you want to help your country help us defeat the propaganda machine that enables Trump and the worst elements of the Republican Party. Help us push back against corporate interests arrayed against action on climate change. Fund local journalism. Fund scholarships. Fund voter registration and protection. And, if you believe in the case you’d make as an independent candidate, join the Democratic primary and make that case before the voters you’d need to win.
Let’s dive in. A year before the first votes are cast in Iowa, Howard Schultz is assuming that the outcome of that process will be unacceptable. He must believe that a) there are tens of millions of people in America who are clamoring for his politics but b) he couldn’t persuade them to vote for you in a Democratic primary. It’s a real pickle.
So what are his politics? In a 60 Minutes interview, Scott Pelley peppered Schultz with policy questions, and on one after another he described a mainstream Democratic position. On immigration, on climate change, on tax policy, he stake out completely ordinary liberal critiques of Trump. Nothing special, nothing new. So what is this great divergence that suggests that Schultz, a lifelong Democrat, has no choice but to run as an independent?
It’s that even though everyone deserves health care, Democratic proposals are too expensive—Medicare for All is a partisan fantasy, our version of Trump’s wall. It fits with what he's said previously—that neither party cares enough about fiscal responsibility. Earlier this year he told CNBC that “the greatest threat domestically to the country is this $21 trillion debt hanging over… future generations.” This is the substance of his centrism, the appeal he believes will draw the independents he views as his natural constituency—the socially liberal, fiscally conservative political homeless American voter.
But I have bad news: while there are many voters like this who nod their heads in Aspen and Davos, and who form the base of the Democratic donor class and the consultants who share their politics—cosmopolitan, tolerant, capitalist, constitutionally moderate and rarely touched by poverty and grinding inequality—those nodding heads do not represent a coalition. In fact, it’s the opposite. What we have learned in recent years—and why you see a move toward more left policies in Democratic circles —is that the politically homeless voter is opposite to what Schultz describes: fiscally liberal and socially moderate.
There's more to say, including about the shallowness of the identifier “independent” and the 40 percent of voters who use it, the actual source of partisan rancor in Washington, the fact that even on the substance of fiscal responsibility, it’s Democrats who have actually carried that mantle for a generation. And, by the way, on health care, we’re about to have a huge debate about universal coverage and how to pay for it. The debate will take place in the primary Schultz is planning to skip.
Look, I know I’m a partisan Democrat, the kind of person whose views Schultz is training himself to ignore. But in my experience, there’s no one a billionaire trusts more than a fellow billionaire. Listen to Mike Bloomberg who said, “In 2020, the great likelihood is that an independent would just split the anti-Trump vote and end up re-electing the President.” He faced the same choice as Schultz. The only difference is he had people around him who cared more about telling him the truth than taking his money.
The effort to remove Donald Trump from office—by impeachment, resignation, or electoral defeat—is among the most important political fights in American history. The stakes are total. If he is on the ballot in 2020 he will be defeated by Democratic voters, with the help of independents, first-time voters, and some Republicans—or he will be re-elected. A huge percentage of those voters are about to engage in a great contest, state by state, to choose the person we want to face off against Trump. Millions of our fellow citizens will take it seriously, they will knock on doors and persuade their friends, they will argue and think and worry about who they should support. For Howard Schultz to evade that process, for him to introduce so profound an uncertainty into this election, for him to leapfrog the primaries, avoid any debate, insert himself into that decision, simply because he has the money to do it and the foolishness to believe the consultants he's paid to get to yes, is reprehensible.
I believe Schultz loves this country. I believe he believes in a noble conception of his motivations. So my hope is that the criticisms reach him, that he talks to smart people he does not pay, that he does not show the same kind of hubris and selfishness and ego that led Trump to believe he alone could fix it.
Howard Schultz, if you want to help your country help us defeat the propaganda machine that enables Trump and the worst elements of the Republican Party. Help us push back against corporate interests arrayed against action on climate change. Fund local journalism. Fund scholarships. Fund voter registration and protection. And, if you believe in the case you’d make as an independent candidate, join the Democratic primary and make that case before the voters you’d need to win.