Howard Schultz to Run in 2020

For John, BLUF:  I welcome the billionaire to the race, even though I don't drink coffee.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Howard Schultz Could Actually Win the Presidency

From PJ Media, by Mr Roger L Simon, 28 January 2019.

Here is the lede plus three:

Elections are often a reaction to the previous one.  America will be searching for a calm, level-headed voice.  That, we know, is not Trump, nor is it the hard-left candidate that could well, in fact likely will, win the Democratic nomination.  Current frontrunner Kamala Harris is far from reassuring.  She's a shrill (see the Kavanaugh hearings) quasi-socialist promising pie in the sky -- Medicare-for-all, debt-free college, guaranteed pre-K, minimum basic income, confiscatory taxes -- and she's just getting started.  Bernie and others will soon be following suit.  Fauxcahontas already has, competing in a game of socialist one-upmanship.  Even supposedly centrist Biden is playing along.  Who will win the approval of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? Too bad she's too young to run.

The cost of all this, the actual numbers, if they ever even publish any, will be stratospheric.  The national debt will reach the moon and beyond. Maybe Alpha Centauri.  If this nonsense were all enacted, the stock market would plunge, unemployment would soar, incomes would plummet, and we'd be headed for a global Depression.  It's that stupid.

And Howard Schultz knows it.  That is why -- straight out of the box or whatever -- he has isolated the escalating national debt as his main issue and pilloried Trump for doing nothing about it.  (He has a point there.)  At first, he will seem stodgy to "idealistic" millennials, but after a while, they too will wise up.  It's their futures too, after all. The outrageous costs of the Democratic platform will be made known to them and then some. The election, already started, is long. The hard left's proposals will not wear well.

Schultz's policies would end up being much closer to Trump's than to the Democratic opposition. He would want to increase taxes, but only a smidge, so as not to disrupt the economy.  He opposes Medicare for all as far too expensive.  He would be for a strong defense, at least relatively.  He would be middle-of-the-road on immigration, where many Americans are.  He would be Trump-lite, a palatable Donald that many of the media could swallow because he wouldn't insult them for being liars (even though they are) or say outrageous (though often accurate) things for them to deliberately misinterpret.

The Democrats should scoop him up, rather than denigrate him.  But, he does, as an outsider, disrupt the regular political order.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff