“After this week’s CNN town hall, it’s more and more clear that any money Howard Schultz might spend on an independent presidential bid would function as an in-kind campaign contribution to Donald Trump.” – Ronald Brownstein
“To win a majority of electoral college votes, which Schultz says would be his goal, he would have to ultimately replace the Democratic nominee as the favored choice of voters who do not want Trump to win a second term.” – Michael Scherer
Schultz has praised the “thoughtful analysis” of a conservative commentator who fears the Democrats will nominate a “hard-left” candidate and – in the course of the column – demeans Kamala Harris (“shrill … quasi-socialist promising pie in the sky”), Elizabeth Warren (“Fauxcahontas … playing a game of socialist one-upmanship”), and “supposedly centrist” Joe Biden. The critic also name-checks Bernie Sanders and, of course, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Schultz, who claims to be a “lifelong Democrat” – but not a very attentive one (“Schultz voted in just 11 of 38 elections dating back to 2005”), took back the praise he had offered after folks actually read the “thoughtful analysis” he was promoting; he deleted the tweet when he was asked about it by the Washington Post, and blamed someone else for posting the link on his personal Twitter account.
Nonetheless, he embraces the conservative views expressed in the deleted column. It’s the “hard-left,” “quasi-socialist” Democrats that Schultz fears and, most scary and objectionable of all, the proposal (broached by conservatives’ favorite new Democratic Member of Congress, Ocasio-Cortez) to raise the marginal tax rate for incomes over $10 million to 70% (the level in the United States in 1980).
When asked at his CNN Town Hall what he thinks his personal income tax rate – as a billionaire – should be, Schutz concedes that he “should pay more taxes,” but tap dances for more than a minute (with platitudes about corporate taxes, the Republican tax bill, comprehensive tax reform, as well as personal income tax rates for millionaires) without giving an answer, at which point the moderator Poppy Harlow reminds him of the question and asks, “Give me a sense. Are you talking about you should pay 2% higher? Ten percent higher, twenty percent higher federal income tax?”
He stammers and says, “I don’t – Poppy, I don’t know what the number is….”
“Ballpark it for people,” she asks.
He won’t. He finally gets to the heart of his concern, “I think that what’s being proposed at 70% is a punitive number. And I think there are better ways to do this.”
Better ways. In other words, instead of significant increases in the personal tax rates of billionaires, we should seek revenue increases somewhere else.
“To obscure his tilt toward the Democrats on almost all issues, Schultz has quickly settled on a strategy of loudly criticizing ideas popular on the party’s far-left flank.”
Brownstein perceives in Schultz’s strategy echoes of the (now defunct) centrist group, the Democratic Leadership Council, which Bill Clinton embraced in his trek to the White House. But there’s a huge difference in the two strategies. The DLC and Clinton worked for years “inside the Democratic Party.” Regardless of what you think of Clinton or his policies, he sought to “rebuild a political majority that would allow Democrats to regain control of the national agenda from the increasingly militant conservatism within the GOP.”
Schultz seeks to do the opposite: to split the Democrats and peel off Democratic voters to his independent campaign.
‘Exaggerating the power of the left in the Democratic coalition, he’s portraying the party as beyond redemption for anyone holding centrist views. To make that case, Schultz is echoing claims from Trump and other Republicans that Democrats have become radical. At times, Schultz has even called some of the Democratic ideas he opposes “un-American” or “not American,” not to mention “punitive” and “ridiculous.”
By validating the Republican efforts to portray Democrats as outside the mainstream, Schultz is helping Trump already.’