Unlike Donald Trump, the former Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz is a genuinely successful businessman who built a company that’s become part of the daily lives of people across America. For this, those of us who are horrified by Trump’s relentless grifting should be grateful. It gives us something concrete to boycott should Schultz decide to launch a narcissistic spoiler campaign for president.
In an interview with Scott Pelley on “60 Minutes” on Sunday, Schultz decried “extremes on both sides” and said he’s considering a run for president as a “centrist independent.” He hasn’t yet made up his mind, and perhaps the overwhelmingly negative reaction from almost all segments of the Democratic Party, as well as some NeverTrump Republicans, will dissuade him. There’s a danger, though, that the reality-distorting effects of being a billionaire will warp his judgment, convincing him that his business acumen is transferable to the realm of politics. If so, he could end up helping Donald Trump get re-elected.
Shultz appears to share the conviction, endemic among American elites, that the country hungers for a candidate who is socially liberal but fiscally conservative. After all, if you’re rich, you probably know a lot of people like this. “I’m a socially liberal, fiscally conservative centrist who would love to vote for a rational Democrat and get Trump out of the White House,” a chief executive of a major bank, who wanted to remain anonymous, recently told Politico, lamenting Michael Bloomberg’s poor odds in a Democratic primary.
[Listen to “The Argument” podcast every Thursday morning, with Ross Douthat, Michelle Goldberg and David Leonhardt.]
But this frustrated executive’s politics aren’t widely shared by people who haven’t been to Davos. In a 2017 study, the political scientist Lee Drutman plotted the 2016 electorate along two axes, one dealing with social issues and identity, the other with economics and trade. Only 3.8 percent of voters fell into the socially liberal/economically conservative quadrant.
Indeed, Trump’s campaign demonstrated that the truly underserved market in American politics was voters who are socially conservative but economically liberal — the photonegative of what Schultz is offering. Such voters — the type who might resent both immigrants and Wall Street — make up 28.9 percent of the electorate, according to Drutman’s study.
Schultz makes much of the fact that around 40 percent of Americans identify as “independent.” But as anyone who has spent 15 minutes googling should know, independent is not the same thing as centrist. Most independents lean toward one party, and as the Pew Research Center has demonstrated, in the past two decades independents have grown more ideologically polarized, not more moderate. America has two independent senators. One of them is Bernie Sanders.
Even if there were a latent constituency of modern Rockefeller Republicans longing for the leadership of an enlightened plutocrat, third-party presidential campaigns are terrible vehicles for building political power. America’s two-party system, unfortunate as it is, is an inevitable result of the winner-take-all nature of our elections. It cannot simply be wished away.
There are policies that could potentially break the two-party stranglehold on our politics. Ranked-choice voting, which Maine used for the 2018 congressional elections, lets voters select candidates in order of preference. One by one, the candidates with the fewest votes are eliminated. Their supporters’ votes are apportioned to those voters’ next-highest choice, until someone emerges with a majority. If Schultz were serious about challenging party monopolies he might invest some of his fortune in efforts to pass similar reforms elsewhere.
Absent such changes, his candidacy would threaten to siphon away enough votes to give Trump a second term. In 2015 and 2016, Bloomberg, a billionaire businessman whose politics are much like Schultz’s, considered mounting an independent campaign for president. His team looked closely at poll data and focus groups, and found he’d be potentially competitive only in blue states. “All of the results were very consistent,” Howard Wolfson, Bloomberg’s political adviser, told me. “An independent with Mike’s profile would have merely resulted in Trump’s election.”
Obviously, Trump won anyway, but Bloomberg’s research underscores the folly of Schultz’s trial balloon. On Monday, Bloomberg, who is contemplating a 2020 run as a Democrat, put out a statement that seemed aimed at Schultz, though it didn’t mention him by name. “In 2020, the great likelihood is that an independent would just split the anti-Trump vote and end up re-electing the president,” wrote Bloomberg. “That’s a risk I refused to run in 2016 and we can’t afford to run it now.”
By flirting with such a risk, Schultz is demonstrating a level of megalomaniacal recklessness that is itself disqualifying. “I think all American citizens should be worried about the possibility of Donald Trump being re-elected with 40 percent of the vote,” said Wolfson.
Then again, on “60 Minutes,” Schultz likened Democratic proposals for universal health care to Trump’s border wall. Perhaps from his vantage point, re-electing this president doesn’t seem uniquely catastrophic when set against the danger of European-style social democracy. He recently set out on a nationwide tour, so hopefully he’ll hear from Americans who disagree. Meanwhile, among the challenges we’re called upon to meet in this moment of profound democratic crisis, finding another place to get a latte is an easy one.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
Michelle Goldberg has been an Opinion columnist since 2017. She is the author of several books about politics, religion and women’s rights, and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues. @michelleinbklyn
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Home » Analysis & Comment » Opinion | Howard Schultz, Please Don’t Run for President
Opinion | Howard Schultz, Please Don’t Run for President
Unlike Donald Trump, the former Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz is a genuinely successful businessman who built a company that’s become part of the daily lives of people across America. For this, those of us who are horrified by Trump’s relentless grifting should be grateful. It gives us something concrete to boycott should Schultz decide to launch a narcissistic spoiler campaign for president.
In an interview with Scott Pelley on “60 Minutes” on Sunday, Schultz decried “extremes on both sides” and said he’s considering a run for president as a “centrist independent.” He hasn’t yet made up his mind, and perhaps the overwhelmingly negative reaction from almost all segments of the Democratic Party, as well as some NeverTrump Republicans, will dissuade him. There’s a danger, though, that the reality-distorting effects of being a billionaire will warp his judgment, convincing him that his business acumen is transferable to the realm of politics. If so, he could end up helping Donald Trump get re-elected.
Shultz appears to share the conviction, endemic among American elites, that the country hungers for a candidate who is socially liberal but fiscally conservative. After all, if you’re rich, you probably know a lot of people like this. “I’m a socially liberal, fiscally conservative centrist who would love to vote for a rational Democrat and get Trump out of the White House,” a chief executive of a major bank, who wanted to remain anonymous, recently told Politico, lamenting Michael Bloomberg’s poor odds in a Democratic primary.
[Listen to “The Argument” podcast every Thursday morning, with Ross Douthat, Michelle Goldberg and David Leonhardt.]
But this frustrated executive’s politics aren’t widely shared by people who haven’t been to Davos. In a 2017 study, the political scientist Lee Drutman plotted the 2016 electorate along two axes, one dealing with social issues and identity, the other with economics and trade. Only 3.8 percent of voters fell into the socially liberal/economically conservative quadrant.
Indeed, Trump’s campaign demonstrated that the truly underserved market in American politics was voters who are socially conservative but economically liberal — the photonegative of what Schultz is offering. Such voters — the type who might resent both immigrants and Wall Street — make up 28.9 percent of the electorate, according to Drutman’s study.
Schultz makes much of the fact that around 40 percent of Americans identify as “independent.” But as anyone who has spent 15 minutes googling should know, independent is not the same thing as centrist. Most independents lean toward one party, and as the Pew Research Center has demonstrated, in the past two decades independents have grown more ideologically polarized, not more moderate. America has two independent senators. One of them is Bernie Sanders.
Even if there were a latent constituency of modern Rockefeller Republicans longing for the leadership of an enlightened plutocrat, third-party presidential campaigns are terrible vehicles for building political power. America’s two-party system, unfortunate as it is, is an inevitable result of the winner-take-all nature of our elections. It cannot simply be wished away.
There are policies that could potentially break the two-party stranglehold on our politics. Ranked-choice voting, which Maine used for the 2018 congressional elections, lets voters select candidates in order of preference. One by one, the candidates with the fewest votes are eliminated. Their supporters’ votes are apportioned to those voters’ next-highest choice, until someone emerges with a majority. If Schultz were serious about challenging party monopolies he might invest some of his fortune in efforts to pass similar reforms elsewhere.
Absent such changes, his candidacy would threaten to siphon away enough votes to give Trump a second term. In 2015 and 2016, Bloomberg, a billionaire businessman whose politics are much like Schultz’s, considered mounting an independent campaign for president. His team looked closely at poll data and focus groups, and found he’d be potentially competitive only in blue states. “All of the results were very consistent,” Howard Wolfson, Bloomberg’s political adviser, told me. “An independent with Mike’s profile would have merely resulted in Trump’s election.”
Obviously, Trump won anyway, but Bloomberg’s research underscores the folly of Schultz’s trial balloon. On Monday, Bloomberg, who is contemplating a 2020 run as a Democrat, put out a statement that seemed aimed at Schultz, though it didn’t mention him by name. “In 2020, the great likelihood is that an independent would just split the anti-Trump vote and end up re-electing the president,” wrote Bloomberg. “That’s a risk I refused to run in 2016 and we can’t afford to run it now.”
By flirting with such a risk, Schultz is demonstrating a level of megalomaniacal recklessness that is itself disqualifying. “I think all American citizens should be worried about the possibility of Donald Trump being re-elected with 40 percent of the vote,” said Wolfson.
Then again, on “60 Minutes,” Schultz likened Democratic proposals for universal health care to Trump’s border wall. Perhaps from his vantage point, re-electing this president doesn’t seem uniquely catastrophic when set against the danger of European-style social democracy. He recently set out on a nationwide tour, so hopefully he’ll hear from Americans who disagree. Meanwhile, among the challenges we’re called upon to meet in this moment of profound democratic crisis, finding another place to get a latte is an easy one.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
Michelle Goldberg has been an Opinion columnist since 2017. She is the author of several books about politics, religion and women’s rights, and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues. @michelleinbklyn
Source: Read Full Article