that's Howard Schultz campaign is gonna be a real grind day man I wonder if he's
gonna get roasted quick quiz what's the biggest political party in the United
States right now oh wait that long
time's up did you say independence because if you didn't well you then are
wrong according to Gallup which has been tracking which political party people
identify with for decades 39% of people in January 2019 call themselves
independents while 34% said they were Democrats and 25% identified as
Republicans now while that independent number is down from 45% who called
themselves independents in March 2018 it's still pretty remarkable right more
people think of themselves as unaffiliated with either major party
then identify with Republicans or Democrats it's even the sort of number
that might encourage you to run for president as an independent in 2020 if
you were and I'm spitballing here simply minded ambitious and very very rich
which is where Howard Schultz comes in you might not know Schultz his name or
face yet but you have likely consumed lots and lots of his delicious Java chip
frappuccinos over your lifetime Schultz is the former chairman and CEO of
Starbucks he stepped down from that job last year and has been seen ever since
as a potential presidential candidate now in mid-january in an interview with
60 minutes Schultz made very clear that he's not only likely to run for
president but he's going to do so as an independent we're living at a most
fragile time not only the fact that this president is not qualified to be the
president but the fact that both parties are consistently not doing what's
necessary on behalf of the American people and aren't engaged every single
day in revenge politics all of which sounds good
people are sick of politics as usual and they do hate Washington
and everyone in it less than three and ten people in a recent NBC Wall Street
Journal poll said they thought the country was currently heading in the
right direction just 39 percent approved of President Donald Trump how about
Nancy Pelosi's approval you ask how does twenty eight percent approval for the
speaker sound so we should just coronate I mean elect elect Schulz president now
right not so fast there are lots of problems with running for president as
an independent which probably explains why we haven't had an independent
president yet and why Schulz is unlikely to break that forever trend let's go
through the problems problem number one the two parties are super powerful did
you know every state has a different process to qualify for the presidential
ballot they do all 50 and do you know that most of those states require you to
collect lots and lots of signatures from people who live in them and that
collecting tens of thousands of signatures is hugely labor-intensive and
very very expensive but when you're the democratic or Republican nominee for
president the long-standing party infrastructure handles all of that for
you when you're running as an independent
not so much problem number two there are fewer actual independents out there than
you might think now remember all those numbers I cited
about how there are more independents in the country than there are Democrats or
Republicans yeah they're basically bunk nextly they're not totally bunk just not
totally accurate when it comes to who people vote for when they choose a
presidential candidate people love to tell pollsters that their independence
because it fits with how they see themselves they aren't reflexively
partisan rather than looking at which party someone comes from they instead
make a recent assessment of which candidates policies are better for the
country except that voting patterns tell us that is almost never true and truth
about so-called independence is that most of them are closeted partisans yeah
they like to tell pollsters and people like cocktail parties that they don't
side with one party but when they vote they consistently vote for one side over
the other problem number three you have to convince people you aren't just a
spoiler a quick look at Schultz's Twitter feed since he announced he was
likely to run for president as an independent reveals this Democrats
really and I mean really don't want him to do it the argument goes that Schulz
all lifetime Democrat will sap votes from the Democratic nominee and lower
Trump's win number in a two way race Trump needs fifty percent of the vote
plus one which most polls suggest he will struggle to come anywhere close to
in a 3-way race however Trump could win somewhere between 42 percent and 47
percent depending on how credible Schultz remains in the race the other
less partisan problem with the whole spoiler thing is that the average voter
doesn't like to feel like they are throwing their vote away on someone who
has zero chance of winning there's a long history of independent candidates
running in the mid teens in terms of support a few months before the election
and then watching that support totally collapse as the election gets closer and
people think twice about casting what amounts to a protest vote of course none
of this means Schultz won't run I mean he's running unless something huge and
unforeseen happens and none of it means that he can't be a real factor in the
race especially if Democrats choose someone regarded as too far to the
ideological left of the average swing voter what all of it means though is
this running as an independent for president and wanting to actually have a
chance to win is a hell of a lot harder than it looks from a quick analysis of
our country's politics and that is the point we make new
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