The Ultimate Consumer Wank Vanity Candidate
By 
Tom Friedman used to write multiple columns a year about his desire a Third Way third party presidential candidate who understood that Tom Friedman was right about everything. In his brief time as a potential candidate has managed to hit every mark you would expect of the plutocratic vanity candidate who would play to this audience and no other. Obviously, this starts with his embrace of Pain Caucus politics virtually no voters in either party actually want. (As Paul has said, every pundit or wealthy person who makes an argument for Social Security cuts should be sentenced to five summers tarring roofs in San Antonio.)
But that ain’t all! He’s a “self made” billionaire who benefited from government programs he wants to cut to that America’s richest people can keep as much income with no marginal utility as possible:
Howard Schultz: I’m a self-made billionaire.
Also Howard Schultz: The federal government paid for my housing. pic.twitter.com/LxIeluPMR9
— Jamison Foser (@jamisonfoser) January 30, 2019
“I was on federal housing assistance. Did anybody help us? No.” And, as befitting a consumer vanity candidate, he generally can’t be bothered to vote:
"State and county election records show that going back to 2005, @HowardSchultz has cast a ballot in just 11 of 38 elections." https://t.co/yqy7VINgnr
— Anil Kalhan (@kalhan) January 31, 2019
He has so little idea what he’s doing he’s arranging visits to states where…parties whose nominations he isn’t trying to win are holding early primaries:
This dolt knows so little about politics, he doesn’t even understand that the early states only matter if you want to win a party nomination. He’s running as a fucking independent. https://t.co/4iuuFVMPW2
— Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) January 31, 2019
If he stays in this until the end, Mark Penn might be able to afford a bigger yacht than Dan Snyder. His policy discussion, needless to say, consists of uninformed criticism of Democratic plans and completely vacuous calls for powerful interests to solve problems for everyone:
The cast of Morning Joe gently prodded Schultz into saying something about public policy. He managed to explain his intention to fix health care by “bring[ing] in people smarter than myself into the room … Get Pharma in the room, get private enterprise into the room, and realize we all need to have skin in the game.” As if nobody has thought to solve health care by consulting smart people or bargaining with the private sector! On taxes, he said his position was, “Let’s not send out a tweet or a press release that makes news, let’s get serious people around the table.” Previous negotiations on tax reform have also involved serious people and tables, but Schultz imagines his independent status will transform everything, somehow.
Somehow, though, this is the most instructive one for me:
Asked to name the best Democratic and Republican presidents of the last 50 years, Schultz named Franklin Roosevelt — who died 74 years ago — for a Democrat. For a Republican, he cited Ronald Reagan, and the thing that most captivated him about the Reagan presidency was his refusal to remove his sport coat in the Oval Office.
“The thing I took away from Ronald Reagan? […] Ronald Reagan never took his jacket off in the Oval Office. Why? Because of the respect of the dignity of the Oval Office.”
Incidentally, this is not true…
Evaluating political candidates based on inane trivia and uncritically accepts every wingnut media legend to come down the pike? We’re just living in a political novel written by Ron Fournier in which Schultz is the hero, right?
…As a commenter notes, I also forgot to mention that his idea of “thoughtful” political commentary includes…a Roger L. Simon column that refers to Kamala Harris as “shrill” and Elizabeth Warren as “Fauxcahontas.”
This piece that Howard Schultz tweeted out as a "thoughtful analysis" describes Kamala Harris as "shrill" for her questioning of Brett Kavanaugh and refers to Elizabeth Warren as "Fauxcahontas." https://t.co/uWhMe8phRj
— Michelle Goldberg (@michelleinbklyn) January 30, 2019