I have spent the past two days listening to the impressive life story of prospective presidential candidate Howard Schultz. Schultz the latte king of the world, as the founder of the highly successful Starbucks coffee chain, has not exactly wowed me with his bashing of what he calls his party, the Democrats and the both sides do it defense of his political stance. I carefully chose the word stance because so far, I have not heard what Schultz wants to do besides the boilerplate “chicken in every pot.” What are his political solutions? He has told us—so far, what Republicans have said for years when they are out of office, ‘we cannot afford it.’ Oh, sure he is trolling Senator Kamala Harris a bit, who has clearly stated her position, like it or not. He has punched with the strength of a Caffè macchiato, and tried to reassure us by whipping up a little extra foamy anti-Trumpism to make his ambiguity palatable.
Brown of the Midwest…
While I tried valiantly not to hop on the pile of Schultz bashers the Democratic Senator from Ohio last night, Sherrod Brown, sealed the deal of my discontent with Mr. Schultz. He [Brown] prefaced his answer to a query from Chris Matthews the host of MSNBC’s Hardball program that cleared up my last effort to give Schultz more of a chance, “ Where these dollars are spent…”He went on to talk about the meat and potatoes of America, ‘infrastructure, medical research (health care) and public education.’
Schultz cannot dispute that the net change to the GDP would not be altered exponentially if healthcare became universal just who gets the money. The unchecked cost estimates tossed around by him and Michael Bloomberg to implement healthcare to the approximately 330 million Americans is between 30 and 40 trillion dollars over ten years. The actuary charts show a current cost of 3.5 trillion annually with collective insurance profits, distribution, and enactment. So truly the question can be paraphrased in Senator Brown’s statement this way, ‘on whom are the dollars to be spent?’ Neither Howard Schultz nor Michael Bloomberg mention a word about corporate profiteering by insurance companies. I am always leery when a billionaire starts from the premise of not investing in the worker by disguising opposition to ‘trickle down’ as socialism and extremism.
What bothers me most about the proposed Schultz run is the idea that if Democrats pan him, they are being small minded and exclusive. Schultz did not come to the table with a plan to enter the lion’s den and push his idea on what he says is an underserved constituency he gave up before the fight. If your ideas are valid the Democratic party will support you; If they are not self-serving, Democrats will support you and most of all if you do not allow yourself to parrot the both sides do it line, The Democratic Party will support a good idea. I listened to columnist Ron Fournier yesterday (on the same Hardball episode) proffer, why are Democrats afraid of Schultz, Mr. Fournier you have it backward. If Mr. Schultz is right, why is a self-described Democrat afraid to convince the base of his party? Democrats invited him in for a cup of joe, he excused himself.
Vote in 2020 for Change.