Editor’s note: Jon Margolis is VTDigger’s political columnist.
[T]here are both some lessons and some laughs in this business of coffee billionaire Howard Schultz maybe running for president, and one of the lessons is relevant to Sen. Bernie Sanders maybe running for president.
The first laugh is at the expense of Democrats and their minions among the professional chatterers all in a tizzy about the possibility that Schultz, running as a centrist independent, will split the anti-Trump vote, re-electing the president.
Their fear is not entirely without foundation. A good case can be made that Al Gore would have won the 2000 election had Ralph Nader not run as an independent.
But Ralph Nader was a very well-known fellow who had a consistent message and knew how to get it across. Schultz, on the basis of his recent interviews, isn’t, doesn’t, and doesn’t. Democratic panic is at the very least premature.
The second laugh is at Schultz’s expense. No doubt he knows how to sell coffee; he was CEO of Starbucks from 1986 to 2000 and again from 2008 to 2017. What he seems not to know much about are politics and policy.
He said that “over 40 percent of the electorate” identify as political independents, which is factually accurate but politically false because most “independents” lean strongly toward one party or the other. His belief that most voters are “socially liberal but economically conservative” is wrong, too. If anything, most voters are economic liberals who are moderately conservative on social issues.
Then he said some Democrats are proposing “free health care for all, which the country cannot afford.” That’s not what those Democrats are proposing. They are proposing universal health care, and of course the country can afford it. Some version of “Medicare for all,” (what they are proposing) is how almost every other capitalist democracy finances health care. Whether or not it is a good idea for the United States, it is doable.
On this issue, Schultz is on the same page as former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the other billionaire pondering a presidential run, but as a Democrat. Bloomberg said a health care plan that covered everyone would “bankrupt” the country, joining Schultz in assuming that America is remarkably less competent than other countries.
Not an uncommon attitude. Part of the American elite – mostly but not entirely the conservative elite – has been reveling for years in their belief in American ineptitude. They have effectively reversed the old motto of the Seabees: “The difficult we do now, the impossible takes a little longer.” Instead, their outlook is: “The difficult is too much for us so don’t even mention the impossible.”
The Schultz and Bloomberg campaigns share another attribute: their inspiration comes almost entirely from themselves. There is no identifiable constituency calling for either man to make the race. “Run Howard, run” rallies have taken place exactly nowhere. The groundswell of Bloomberg support appears limited to those on his payroll.
It’s happened before. Jimmy Carter, a little-known former governor of Georgia, manufactured his own candidacy and got elected in1976. Some candidates who respond to enthusiastic public support, such as Ted Kennedy in 1980 or John McCain in 2008, end up losing. But all those candidacies were based on more than the combination of personal wealth and personal ambition.
Here’s another similarity, and this one applies to Sanders and to former Vice President Joseph Biden. All these potential candidates are going to decide whether or not to run based on many different standards, with information from many different sources – old friends and allies, past and present office-holders, politically informed journalists and academics they know.
And people they have hired – pollsters, political strategists, media mavens, and the like – to help them make up their minds. And in almost every case, these political professionals are going to be better off if their boss becomes a candidate.
They are going to give their boss their best advice. Stipulate for the nonce that they are honorable men and women who would never think of fudging the data or doing anything less than their due diligence in examining all the pros and cons of the decision to be made.
But they are also human. Humans like income and stability. If Schultz, Bloomberg, Biden and Sanders decide to run, the men and women they have been paying to help them make that advice are probably going to join the campaign, meaning they will have gainful employment for at least a year. If the potential candidate decides not to run, most of those folks are going to have to go find a job. Incentives matter. There is no way that the advice they give will not be swayed by their personal financial situations.
Biden and Sanders are not manufacturing their potential candidacies on their own. Both have real public support. Biden’s, say the polls, is broader. But the backing for Sanders appears more enthusiastic. Neither one has the billions that Schultz and Bloomberg do. But they have enough. Both have been prodigious fundraisers. One reason Sanders showed more electoral strength in 2016 than many political observers expected was that he was able to raise millions of dollars in small donations, much of it through the skilled use of social media.
The skilled operatives who helped him do that are still available. That helps explain why his political committee, the Friends of Bernie Sanders, has $8,776,282.85 cash on hand, according to the latest Federal Election Commission report. That’s his Senate campaign committee, but most of it may be transferred to a presidential race. He and those skilled operatives know how to raise more.
No one is doing anything wrong here, not the potential candidates, not the polling and communications experts who work for them. It’s just that politics has become astonishingly expensive, and all that money has – as a lot of money always does in America – created an industry. And industries always create an army of professionals, who – however noble their intent, however honorable their objectives – have to look out for themselves.
