Former Starbucks CEO Considering Running for President in 2020 as an Independent

Howard Schultz, a former Starbucks CEO, is considering launching an independent POTUS run in 2020.

This was already set to be an unusually crowded field in the Democratic primaries (and possibly featuring a challenge or two in the Republican primary as well), but this marks the first likely entry into the independent field.

My initial thoughts?

From a governing perspective, the last two years have hopefully demonstrated that running a business doesn't qualify you to run a government, but I suspect some will cling to this notion.

From a technical election perspective, his election prospects are extremely dim given Duverger's Law and the structural disadvantages of running as an independent. However, given Trump's rock solid base support he represents a higher risk of siphoning Democratic votes than Republican votes thereby making Trump's reelection more likely.

An interview of his is airing on 60 Minutes today, and he's written a book, "From the Ground Up," if you're interested in either of those.

He should run as a democrat, and split the corporate vote even more.

Where are all the lawyers, professors, doctors, educators, and learned people at?

Are we really OK with billionaires as our leaders?

I want someone smarter than me in office, not someone 100000x richer than me in office.

Didn't we learn anything from trump...... billionaires shouldn't run for politics

Why not? It takes millions to run a campaign. If it's not their own money, it's going to be wealthy donors.

But being rich means successful. And how do you get successful if you are not smart?

Ha beat that logic. :P

Michael Bloomberg would be a credible candidate having considerable political experience with both parties and positioned as a centrist. And unlike Trump, his wealth and the way he manages it will be a plus. Dude has already given away many $Billions and is very credible as a philanthropist.

Yeah but to make those billions, it means being in debt to a lot of people in the first place.

You think billionaires are self-made (even the self-made ones)? You think they are not beholden to people?

Even if they don't owe anyone anything, they have rich friends they'd want to help out, in addition to themselves. You can't reason with people that equate money to power, and think the whole realm of politics is just a power struggle. This isn't Game of Thrones, this is the real world. There are laws, diplomacy, history, and a lot of other things other than "I'm rich so I know what to do".

Yeah...but....I....DAMMIT! I'm going home!

"Because Trump did it, why can't we?"

The last thing this country needs is another CEO pretending to be president.

I guess he doesn't mind wasting millions on a pipe dream?

Ross Perot managed to get around 19 million votes when he ran in 1992 and depending on who you ask, he may have cost Bush Sr. his reelection.

If he runs and Trump gets reelected he will be on the most wanted list for many Democrats.

Studies have shown Independents take equally away from both parties so you cannot statistically say he cost Bush Sr an election. The failure of trickle down cost him the election.

@LJS9502_basic: That doesn't mean they take equally from each party in a given election.

And like Trump add people to your cabinet which are also wealthy billionares, makes sense.

While that may be true in many cases, in this particular scenario Schultz would probably suck more Democratic votes than Republican votes due to his declared views.

Also, even if he isn't the reason Trump wins that doesn't mean he won't get blamed for it, especially when you consider the amount of people that blame Perot for Bush's loss in 92.

Hitchens might have applied for American citizenship and run for President had he been still alive today.

@mrbojangles25: "Where are all the lawyers, professors, doctors, educators, and learned people at?"

The Democratic party. :-P

They're derided as the liberal elite.

Apparently he advocates cutting Medicare and Social Security. If he sticks with that as part of his platform, well, good luck to him, LOL.

Mark Zuckerberg for 2020??? hmm?

After giving this a day I'm going to say he's a bad choice for democrats, now granted he's an independant, but still, running the country and running a business are two very different things with very different goals. Hopefully Howard will split the middle in a way that he will not appeal to either party and we don't go through a second version of Donald Trump.

Right?

People need to differentiate between actually being elite (good) and elitism/elitist. (bad).

Might seem like a fine line, and it might be, but I'd like to think all those nationalists out there think of themselves as "elite" simply by the virtue of being American, when really that's elitism. Meanwhile, the people that work hard and have an education and take pride in being smart are thought of as having an "elitist" attitude when really they are simply are elite.

*you ever have those moments where you use a word like 10 times in a sentence or two and you realize how weird it sounds? I just had that kind of moment with "elite"...

Starbucks has created a lot of jobs for college graduates. Gotta have a fancy linguistics degree to work an espresso pump.

"College graduates, on average, earned 56% more than high school grads in 2015, according to data compiled by the Economic Policy Institute. That was up from 51% in 1999 and is the largest such gap in EPI's figures dating to 1973."

"The dominance of college graduates in the economy is, if anything, accelerating. Last year, for the first time, a larger proportion of workers were college grads (36%) than high school-only grads (34%), Carnevale's research found. The number of employed college grads has risen 21% since the recession began in December 2007, while the number of employed people with only a high school degree has dropped nearly 8%"

@zaryia:

A new study suggests that in the United States, college and university students must think carefully about their first jobs after graduation.

People who take a job that does not require a degree can find themselves in lower-paid positions than their educated peers even five or ten years later, researchers say.

Burning Glass Technologies and the Strada Institute for the Future of Work partnered to create the report, released in May. Burning Glass is a software company that researches the labor market. The Strada Institute is part of the Strada Education Network, a national nonprofit organization that supports the growth of education in the United States.

The study is based, in part, on data gathered from U.S. companies’ job advertisements and workers’ employment and education histories. Researchers used special software to examine advertisements listed on nearly 50,000 job search websites between 2010 and 2017. They also looked at the résumés of almost 4 million American workers dating from 2000 to 2017.

By comparing this information, researchers found that during those periods, 43 percent of U.S. college and university graduates’ jobs did not require a bachelor’s degree. The researchers considered a job that does not use a person’s education “underemployment.”

And then there is this crap to deal with.

@vl4d_l3nin: None of that data refutes mine. People with a college degree on average will still make around 50% more than those without one. That is rather extraordinary fact, and randomly bashing higher education with right wing memes is straight up WEIRD. In no way is this a base negative to mock....

And the gap only increases,

"The dominance of college graduates in the economy is, if anything, accelerating"

@zaryia: A college education should be everyone's choice, however everyone should consider their degree carefully.

My stupid ex-wife dropped a fortune earning a 4-year degree in English at a private school. Now she's in debt and the best she's done is work for a local espresso stand.

I waited until I finished my enlistment and the VA paid for my degree. Now I'm a manager at a semiconductor company.

And I just laugh and laugh and laugh as she withers away. Muahahaahaha!

@plageus900:

There is no doubt that there are individual cases were college degree doesn't turn out so well. But on average they do in fact earn 50% more.

My point being, the far right proud of being anti-college memes are silly. Much like their anti-climate science memes. Just really gleeful about being ignorant.

I agree with ad1 for once. Schultz is somewhat left leaning. His views are not part of the Trump base, I doubt he'll get republican or conservative support. I can see it more for dems.

Someone's not happy

How will you be against only one of them? Anti college goes hand in hand with anti climate science.

We don't need some douche who is bellyaching over a hypothetical tax on people making tens of millions of dollars. Only rubes that vote for the GOP still believe in that trickle down nonsense. With that being said, independent candidates don't stand a chance to win general elections and only help weaken one side over the other. It's the nature of our election system and anyone who says that the term 'spoiler candidate' is rude and hurts our democratic process, clearly doesn't understand basic political science. This guy could only help Trump given his base is pretty solid at around 30% of the electorate. Republican voters have the ability to hold their nose for awful candidates, more so than democrats do.

One thing I can say good thing about this guy is the fact that his business didn't go bankrupt and that's something I look for.

In this dire time of need, I do want a 3rd party alternative and I like to see how this plays out. If he can favor out Dems, he might have a chance.

He won't be able to sell himself as a centrist for long if he keeps tweeting out articles from PJ Media, lol

The only way I see this dude having a remote chance is if Trumps approval is in the low 30's during the election, and Hillary is nominated for the Democrats.

That said, it's possible.