Our land-line phone rang Tuesday night. Yeah, we have one of those. Call us luddites, but you just wait, cord-cutters. Your houses will float away like pilotless zeppelins. In addition to being a tether, the line also serves as a reservoir, catching all the calls we don’t want pinging our cell phones. We rarely answer it when it does ring, but with the Polar Vortex settling in, we were picking up for school-closing information—which, at the time was two days and counting.
The spouse, a school teacher, picked up the phone and engaged in conversation while a friend and I, monitoring a pork roast, gabbed in the kitchen, until we heard from the dining room, “I would NEVER vote for Trump.”
We poked our heads through the door frame like stunned characters in a silent film—not surprised at her lack of support for our morally and intellectually bankrupt President, of course, but at who, on the other end of that phone line, prompted such a response?
Turns out, the caller was not a dutiful school district administrative lackey or a robocall voiding tomorrow’s school day. It was a rep from a marketing firm trolling for information on the 2020 presidential campaign, and, more specifically, gauging response for Howard Schultz, the former Starbucks CEO and chairman.
The questions started generally, according to my wife, such as, do you consider yourself liberal, moderate, conservative; have you voted in past presidential elections; do you follow party lines when you vote; etc. Then, if the election were today, would you vote for Elizabeth Warren, Donald Trump or Howard Schultz.
My wife laughed. “If it were today?” An absurd question, she added, after exclaiming (again) her absolute distaste for #45. “Warren,” she said.
There followed questions about Starbucks: how often did she go (times per month, week, or rarely or never—for her it’s never, unless it’s a desperate stop with me on a road trip—and what she thought of it as a company. There were questions about Facebook (my wife, admirably, does not have an account) and Mark Zuckerberg specifically. Beto O’Rourke. Amazon and Jeff Bezos.
Eventually, the question was asked again, would you vote for Trump, Schultz or Warren? My wife said, “You already asked that.”
“But the names are in a different order,” the questioner responded, likely off-script.
The surveyor got back on track and went into Schultz’s backstory—born poor in Brooklyn with food stamps supplementing the family, and other anecdotes behind the potential candidate’s rags-to-hard-work-to-riches story. And then some of possible campaign items, such as funds for college students and supporting disabled veterans.
“Geez, he sounds like the perfect candidate,” my wife said, with a yawn. “I’ll still take Warren, as of today.”
But, the surveyor asked, do you feel like Schultz’s role as an independent, that supporting him over a Democrat or Republican to get things done…
“No,” she said. “Voting for him would make sure Trump gets re-elected.”
And there you have it. Howard Schultz is not only doing interviews, but hiring PR firms to call registered voters. It’s interesting. Schultz’s group thinks—or wants, rather—Warren as one end of the ideological spectrum. The other being Trump, of course, which is somewhat problematic for Schultz because, while Trump’s insanity is omnipresent, he can occasionally sound populist on certain issues such as prescription drug price reform and, most recently, prison sentencing reform. The survey also reveals Schultz is concerned about the impact his candidacy will have on Starbucks. Which it would, no doubt. But, do you have convictions, or don’t you?
Not surprisingly, Trump, realizing a Schultz run would benefit his re-election efforts, has already taunted him via his thumbs.
Some say Schultz considering a run is egotism. Some say naïveté. Egomania doesn’t exclude being naïve, so why can’t it be both? As someone who finds No. 45 a terrible president (which Schultz does), he should know that running as an independent—and one who is (his words) “socially liberal and fiscally conservative”—he will likely pull more votes from the Democratic nominee and increase the likelihood #45 is re-elected. But, he says that’s not the case (ego?).
If he thinks he can simply capture the votes of those that declare themselves independent (currently 39 percent of voters), he or his minions hopefully grasp that the vast majority of them declare a party “leaning.” Only 6 percent declare no leanings, which is probably the total vote he would get, and which, as we know, is enough to swing an election these days (naïveté?).
The fundamental and depressing item is, here’s yet another billionaire against taxing the super rich—something America used to do—and wants to stick to the supply-side (trickle-down) economics that, by any honest measure, has failed at least 95 percent of the people on the planet and concentrated resources in the bank accounts and stock portfolios of folks like Schultz. People forget that it wasn’t until 1981 that the top tax rate was cut from 70 percent to 50 percent, then again in 1986 from 50 to 28 percent. That last cut, of course, led to massive deficits (and a habit of increasing them) and, ultimately, George H.W. Bush sensibly (but to his political doom) breaking his “no new taxes” pledge to avoid an economic crash. That top bracket was raised to 39.6 percent during Clinton’s tenure. A balanced budget was achieved. And… well, we know what happened from there.
Schultz saying in a recent interview, “I don’t think we want a 70 percent income tax in America,” is not only deliberately misleading, but reveals that as outside the political party system as he wants to portray himself, he’s deeply inside the corporate executive mindset that wants to protect extreme wealth from any tax whatsoever. What Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is proposing is a 70 percent marginal tax for earnings above $10 million. Everyone (including the super-rich like Schultz) would, for 2018, still pay 37 percent for earnings between $500,000 ($600,000 for couples filing jointly) to $9,999,999. Call Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal a tax on the earnings of elite professional athletes and large-company CEOs—that would be more accurate than Schultz conveying the tax as something that would impact everyone. Not surprisingly, he also finds Elizabeth Warren’s “ultra millionaire” tax idea “ridiculous.”
Schultz, unlike many CEOs of large companies, had a reputation as someone who was sincere about building a company that offered opportunity for its employees and, despite awkwardness (see the Race Together campaign and the training-day response to the arrests of two black males at a Philadelphia Starbucks in early 2018) aspired to a degree of social responsibility. Further, Schultz has called himself a lifelong Democrat, and supported Hillary Clinton in 2016. People can, of course, change their minds. But for whatever social liberalism he proclaims, he’s revealed himself to be a member of the same patronizing, protect-my-billions elite club, tone-deaf to not only the Democrats lining up to run for president and those elected to Congress this past November, but the majority of the Americans (conservative and liberal) who favor such marginal tax increases on the super-rich to counter growing deficits, unaffordable healthcare and education, and an increasingly cruel and unsustainable income inequality.
