That US conservatives are not a “constantly-shrinking” group.
Schultz, a businessman, will appeal to the voters who want a non-partisan businessman instead of a partisan ideologue. Schultz, a man, will appeal to the voters who want a male President & find it hard to vote for a woman. Those voters, if Schultz takes them, are coming heavily from Trump’s base, more than from future nominee Senator Ladypants’s base. Ergo, in a close state, Schultz could throw an election to Ladypants even if he only gets votes in the low single digits.
How is this hard to understand? Just because Trump has incumbency doesn’t mean that everyone who might vote for him definitely will, nor that everyone swayable to vote against him is swayable in the same way. In this mess, yes, a fiscally right-wing naïf splitting the fiscally right-wing naïf portion of the swing vote is “good” for Democrats.
The partisan Republicans won’t vote for him; the partisan Democrats won’t vote for him. Those who just hate Trump and would vote for Senator Ladypants in the absence of coffee-boy’s run will still jump onto her team by election day. Schultz’s entire base is basically pro-business types who are wiling to back an independent.
And if Schultz gives up and drops out, which he will in reality, he won’t leave a mass of angry supporters like Bernie did, because he’s just not that interesting.
The possible downsides (for Dems) are these:
- Schultz may bring voters to the polls who will vote for the GOP downticket & would otherwise stay home. This is possibly why he’s running.
- Owners of mainstream media outlets are the main constituency for Schultz’s nonsense, and they will try to get their writers to talk him up even if the writers know he’s full of hot air. This will make those workplaces somewhat more annoying.
- Mainstream media can, of course, use their influence to make him sound more credible. They can cherry-pick his quotes, they can give him free media. But again, he’s not interesting enough. He’s more boring on TV than the blustering Trump; and he can be attacked by Dems as more of the same nonsense as Romney & Trump, just more ignorant.
Many European companies do that, especially the family-owned ones, but this tends to apply to companies that are relatively long-lived and stable and are generally not run on Extreme Capitalist Paradisical principles. Of course, that might just be their PR BS.
Can Schultz win states in the general election? I will say YES, especially if the Democrats pick a minority with positions to his left. The states I think Schultz can win are Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, and Vermont. All blue states.
Combined these four states are worth 32 electoral votes. Assuming he wins just Washington and Oregon alone, that’s 19 electoral votes, and pretty much show stopper for Democrats to obtain 270 electoral votes.
Look at it this way; Trump won the 2016 Presidential election 306 to 232.
Take away WA and OR, and Clinton drops 213…meaning not even a flip of PA and WI could get them to 270 votes, however, if Trump holds server on the other states that voted for him, he’ll pass the 270 electoral votes.
Hardly click bait. If Schultz ran as a Democrat, Democrats would embrace him quickly. As an independent with left-leaning positions, he can and will speak up against Obamacare and other failures, sounding like a Republican, which would damage the party overall when the facts are on his side.
It is my hunch that Schultz will do very well with white Democrats in northern states that have low minority population.
foolsguinea, can we perhaps find a more dignified name for the hypothetical Democratic nominee and possible future President than “Ladypants”?
I also wonder if he’s such a bad candidate why are Dems super worried about him running.
Not a Democrat myself, but my objection is that we’ve seen the damage an egotistical billionaire businessman who overestimates his political ability can do to the country and we’ve had quite enough, thank you.
So no Howard Schultz, no Oprah, no Jeff Bezos or Mark Cuban, definitely no Kanye West - they can all fuck right off. I’ll give a grudging ‘maybe’ to Michael Bloomberg on the basis of having some experience but I’d rather he fucked off too.
Largely because it’s twelve months until things get real and something has to keep people busy.
Electoral margins are slim. A few hundred thousand people in a few states, and the last two years look very different. It doesn’t take a good candidate to mess with those margins - Jill Stein was abysmal, but she still picked up nearly as many votes in relevant states in 2016 as Clinton would have needed to win.
Howard Schultz is also a pretty lousy candidate. He’s touting ideas that nobody is particularly interested in (his only policy proposals to date are “reduce the debt”, which he doesn’t seem to understand, and “cut entitlements”, which polls about as well as cockroaches and congress), he’s not particularly charismatic, and the last thing any of us need is another arrogant billionaire who thinks he “gets” politics when in fact he doesn’t “get” anything or anyone with a net worth or less than 10 million. But… it doesn’t take much. And given that he’s tailoring his message explicitly towards (what he thinks are) moderate democrats… Eh. The dems have been burned by spoiler candidates pretty hard in the recent past.
Seems to me the bigger issue for Dems is the large number of people running who are going to spend a lot of time ripping each other and so the winner will look pretty bad no matter who it is.
Meanwhile Trump sits back and has no basically issues within his own party , assuming he does run.
adaher:
Michael Bloomberg, maybe?
I’m most surprised by how unprepared, boring, and milquetoast he comes across on his way-too-many TV appearances. He’s offered nothing that I’ve seen beyond the kind of bland platitudes that have infested punditry for at least a decade.
Him and Trump are really challenging the idea that billionaires are necessarily exceptionally talented and able people. Some of them may be just really lucky.
I would argue he showed he’s sensitive to racial discrimination as he orders his business shut for a while to address the issue.
Schultz to me scores highly on the green environmental scale. Starbucks plan for is for 10,000 environmentally friendly stores.
I’d say he has scored well on two issues most on the left are sensitive to. This action speaks louder than any words a slithering politician might say to get elected.
Leaving aside everything else you’re saying, do you really think you’re a good candidate to say what the left cares about, or how seriously they take his actions?
Donald Trump came sneering and taunting out of a field of 17.
Anyone is this thread pointed out that if Schultz takes enough votes away it will throw the election to the House?
edit: And by the way anti-electoral collegers…it seems to me that a number of independent presedintial candidates would have a greater chance of throwing elections to the House in a popular vote than an electoral one
Nobody should point that out. The likelihood of Schultz winning an electoral vote is infinitesimal.
Sure, Schultz could cause a shift of a state’s EVs from one candidate to the other in a way that results in a 269 tie. But he’s just as likely to cause a shift of a state’s EVs from one candidate to the other in a way that keeps a 269 tie from happening.
How would that work?
There are two ways a U.S. Presidential election could be decided by popular vote:
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The National Popular Vote compact, or
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a Constitutional amendment.
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The NPV compact doesn’t kick in until states with at least 270 votes, total, participate. So there’s no way the NPV compact can result in a tie (other than defection of electors, which can happen anyway).
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A Constitutional amendment to decide the Presidential election by popular vote would surely supersede the 12th Amendment in its entirety, including the part where the House decides an election where no candidate gets a majority of the Electors.
The odds of that seem extremely slim to me. Ross Perot, the most successful independent Presidential candidate in recent memory, garnered almost 20 million votes in 1992, which amounted to ~19%. He didn’t win a single state. He managed to win a few scattered counties around the country. He managed a solid second-place finish in Utah, and barely edged out a second-place finish in Maine, but other than that, finished 3rd in every state (I think).
True about Perot, whose appeal was remarkably evenly distributed. But George Wallace won some electoral votes. That was awhile ago, but not exactly ancient history.
What BPC said; in addition, he’d presumably be running attacks against the Democratic nominee, driving up their negatives, not just attacking Trump.