Howard Schultz, Area Billionaire Thinks 2020 Voters Like Nixon

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

In a throwback to the rhetoric of Richard Nixon, would-be independent presidential candidate Howard Schultz insisted on Twitter Monday that he’s going outside the two party system to represent a “silent majority.”

Link to tweet

The phrase has a dark history. Nixon appealed to a “silent majority” in an infamous 1969 speech as his way of rebuffing anti-war protesters and doubling down on the United States’ presence in Vietnam. (Nixon had previously intimated he had a secret plan to end the conflict.) The disastrous war continued until 1973.

At 65, Schultz lived through this history. But he’s previously written that Vietnam didn’t bother him much: “Those were mostly fun years, a time with little responsibility,” Schultz wrote in a 1999 memoir. “With a draft number of 332, I didn’t have to worry about going to Vietnam.”

The unfortunate shout-out to a disgraced president aside, there’s a factual problem with Schultz’s suggestion that a deficit-focused independent has the support of a hidden majority of Americans. In a Sunday interview with Scott Pelley 60 Minutes, Schultz said he’s broken with Democrats because they’re not focused on the $21 billion national debt.

In an interview last summer, Schultz was more specific: “It concerns me that so many voices within the Democratic Party are going so far to the left. I say to myself, ‘How are we going to pay for these things,’ in terms of things like single payer [and] people espousing the fact that the government is going to give everyone a job. I don’t think that’s realistic.” Instead, Schultz said he wanted America to pursue 4 percent GDP growth before adding: “We have to go after entitlements” — a reference to the costs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

So where are the American people — the majority Schultz claims to represent?

It turns out single-payer health care is a big hit with a vocal majority. In recent polling, upwards of 70 percent of Americans endorse Medicare-for-All, including, in at least one poll, a majority of Republicans.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/howard-schultz-silent-majority-785679/

[spooky3]

1. He's going to peel off more votes from Repubs than from Dems. Nt

[Sanity Claws]

2. If they're silent, how does he know what they want, think, need, feel, etc?

He is not exactly living the same lifestyle that the vast majority of Americans is living.

[comradebillyboy]

3. I'd prefer Nixon to Howard Schultz.

[dalton99a]

4. "Both parties"? What a willfully ignorant, malicious, dishonest asshole.

[JI7]

5. he sounds really really stupid. he reminds me of Ben Carson in that they were very good at what

they did before.

but they just sound stupid when talking politics.

[dalton99a]

6. Well, we know the pyramids were used to store coffee

[rusty fender]

7. Entitled billionaire is against "entitlements"

Such a hypocrite

[UniteFightBack]

8. And this guy is supposed to be a life long Dem? This is where he is really pissing me off by

knocking the Democratic Party. Um....fuck you pal.

[Initech]

9. Someone just saw the Watchmen!