If Trump has taught us anything it is that just because a person has been a CEO of a large business and has been able to amass a huge fortune, that doesn’t mean he will be any good as chief executive of our country.

Though he says he hasn’t made a final decision yet, it is pretty clear that Howard Schultz is running for president as an independent.  I must admit it is somewhat unfair to compare him to Donald Trump.  For starters, he grew up poor, so he didn’t have a father who supplied him with millions of dollars in start up cash and bailed him out when he got in financial trouble.  Also unlike Trump, Schultz was by all accounts an honest and trustworthy boss who treated his workers in an exemplary fashion.

However, knowing the coffee business and realizing that there are plenty people who are willing to pay top dollar for specialty coffee drinks like Frappuccino and Chai Latte doesn’t top the presidential qualification list in my book.  I have no problem with Schultz joining the field of candidates vying for the Democratic nomination; after all is a registered Democrat.  (Of course he would probably lose and drop out early when he failed to gain traction.)  However, I do have a problem with the fact that he believes that because he is a billionaire ($3.5 Billion is his net worth according to estimates), he can skip the entire nomination process and simply insert his name on the final presidential ballot while the eventual Democratic nominee has to successfully endure the challenges of multitude of competitors.

Apparently Schultz can do just that.  He was recently asked in an interview whether he would be willing to personally spend the estimated half a billion dollars n it would take to wage a credible presidential campaign through the general election.  He essentially replied – I’m paraphrasing here – “Yea, no problem”.  It is a tremendously difficult and very expensive exercise for an independent to get his name on the ballot in all fifty states, but with his money he can pay the right people to get it done.

Most Americans would love to have a million dollars in savings when they retire and here is a guy who is willing to shell out 500 times that amount just to have an outside shot at becoming the most powerful personal on earth.  That my friends is the arrogance of the super rich.  And of course, predictably, Schultz isn’t a big fan of taxing of people like himself at a much high rate.

Schultz seems to think that he can win, but he has a long path to make that dream a reality.  According to a recently published CNN poll, only 19% of those question said that they were at least somewhat likely to consider voting for him and only 4% answered that they were very likely to vote for him.

Of course it is still very early and many voters have never heard of him, so that might change.  Many Democrats are worried about Schultz running as an independent because he might siphon away enough votes which otherwise would go to the Democratic nominee to get Trump reelected.  Because many of Schultz’s positions on issues are mostly center left, I think that that is a real possibility, especially if the Democrats nominate someone who is very progressive.

My reasoning is this:  The vast majority of those voters who support Trump don’t to do so because they like him as a person; they continue support him through thick and thin because of what he claims he will do for them, such as nominating far right justices to the Supreme Court.  I have to admit that one thing that Trump has done extremely well is cater to his base, even to the extent of alienating the rest of the electorate, so he very unlikely to lose much of that support to the Democratic nominee or to Schultz who is essentially another Democratic candidate running as an independent.

So let’s say that Trump is more or less guaranteed about 43% of the votes in the next presidential election, equivalent to his current job approval numbers. With only the Democratic nominee providing any real completion, he may pick up the votes of a few conservatives not currently in his camp who will vote for anyone but a Democrat.  So let’s say Trump would get 45% of the popular vote in what would essentially be a head to head race.  His chances of winning remain low.

However, with Schultz in the race the situation changes drastically, especially if the Democratic nominee represents the very progressive wing of the party.  People in the middle of the political spectrum who have vowed never to vote for Trump are likely to also be wary of a very progress candidate because they tend to shy away from those with positions on either the far right and the far left.  Schultz would provide them with a viable alternative.  And he doesn’t have to draw but a small percentage of the popular vote to be a spoiler.

With Trump getting 43% to 45% of the vote in a three way race, Schultz would only need to attract 11% to 13% of the vote to give Trump a popular vote victory.  Heavens knows how that would translate in the Electoral College, but I don’t think I need remind everyone that Trump won in the Electoral College 306 to 232 even though Hillary won the popular vote by over three million.

Now Schultz has said repeatedly that he will not run if the polls show that by doing so he will help Trump win. However, when asked point blank in his recent CNN town hall whether if he runs and later it becomes likely that Trump would win, would he withdraw his candidacy.  He dodged the question. Instead he said, “First off, the issue of being a spoiler, how can you spoil a system that is already broken?  It’s just not working.”  This answer ties into his central theme of attacking both parties and the “broken system”, but it certainly doesn’t address the crucial question he was asked.

Now this is a man who is arrogant enough to believe he can buy his way into the White House.  Why should we be willing to believe that he would get out of the race in order to deny Trump a possible victory when he might instead arrogantly cling to the mistaken notion that he still has an outside chance of winning?

It is no accident that Trump is trying to goad Schultz into running.  It is Trump’s best, and perhaps only path to victory.

Cajun     2/20/2019