Run Howard Run

Howard Schultz is mulling over a run for President of the United States as an Independent, having come to the conclusion that the current Democratic party has moved too far to the left for his liking. Over on the BBC's website, the blurb for the story trotted out a familiar objection to his not-quite-yet plan...

Democrats say ex-Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz will re-elect Donald Trump if he runs as an independent.
Howard Schultz: Starbucks tycoon roasted over 2020 plan

In other words, Mr. Schultz will prove popular enough that people who want "Anybody but Trump" in the White House come 2021 may see him as a viable choice. And since Mr. Schultz is running to the center, he's more likely to have appeal in the more conservative states, where in order to win a general election, the "Anybody but Trump" vote needs to be unified.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist, or even a particularly astute political strategist, to understand that as an Independent, Mr. Schultz would have no viable path to winning a general election. This is, after all, why Senator Sanders ran as a Democrat, and Donald Trump as a Republican. They may have not cared much for "their" parties as a whole, but outside it them, neither wouldn't have been taken seriously. And it's unlikely that an Independent candidacy by Mr. Schultz would be treated as anything other than a sideshow.

It would allow voters in the center, however (people who the increasingly left-leaning Democratic activists would rather not have to spend much energy on), to vote for someone other than President Trump without needing to vote for whomever the Democrats nominate. To be sure, there will be a non-zero number of "third-party" votes cast. There are usually around five alternatives to the Democratic/Republican duality on the ballot here in Washington state every four years. But most of them don't make it to the status of also-rans. Jill Stien and Gary Johnson were able to garner some lasting attention, but everyone else effectively ceased to exist on election day (and for many people, only barely had any real presence before then). Howard Schultz allows protest votes for someone who doesn't come across as hopeless, a lunatic or both. And it's understandable that the Democrats would rather have people protesting President Trump than themselves.

In order to head that off (assuming that Mr. Schultz does rum as a protest candidate), the Democrats are going to have to find something other than dislike of President Trump to run on. Something that unites both centrists and left-wingers. And that's going to be hard. The Democrats have always come across as a more fragile coalition than the Republicans. Coming up with someone who can appeal to the left, while appealing to the center more than Mr. Schultz does could be difficult. Mainly because anyone who votes Howard Schultz, Independent, for President understands that he's not going to win. And even if he does, he'd be unlikely to be an effective President, given that he wouldn't have much in the way of a consistent Congressional caucus backing him up.

The Democrats have more than eighteen months to come up with something. And if they were smart about it, they've been crafting that message for the past two+ years already, even if they haven't rolled it out yet. Because this isn't anything particularly surprising. The Democrats should have been prepared for the idea that a reasonably popular/charismatic/well known name would enter the race as an Independent. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have been working on their overt appeals to the many and varied unaligned voters recently.

It's fine and good to complain about Mr. Schultz providing another choice in the race, and resenting the added difficulty that such a choice represents. But almost the only votes that he is going to gain will come from people who really don't have a strong opinion about who wins. Democratic energy would be better spend giving those people someone to vote for, rather than attempting to limit them to only one person to vote against.