On the Starbucks CEO's presidential aspirations

They make lousy coffee.

Sorry, I just had to get that out of the way, as a coffee snob.  You knew that was coming, right?

Anyway, I'll remind you of a few basic points before my primary comments.  Independent candidates have zero chance because we use plurality rules in this country.  As Maurice Duverger observed many decades ago, electoral systems built around plurality rules strongly tend towards two parties, while electoral systems built around "proportional representation" support more than two parties.  Those latter systems are the systems in which you vote, not for a candidate, but for a party, and the proportion of the seats a party gets in the legislature is the proportion of the vote it gets.  We don't do that here.  So, we have two parties.  It's the law.  Duverger's law, as we call it in political science.

Howard Schultz wants to run for president as an independent candidate.  Why?  He likes losing.  Or, he's a moron.  Something like that.

Next observation that I have made before-- the basic observation that the same type of people who delude themselves about the chances of independent candidates do so, in part, because they delude themselves about the number of "independent" voters in the electorate.  Such beliefs are based on badly conducted surveys analyzed by fools.  If you ask a one-tiered survey question about whether people are Democrats, Republicans or Independents, you will get roughly 1/3 in each category, and possibly a plurality of people claiming to be independent.

That last group consists mostly of liars.  You have to ask a follow-up question.  Do those "independents" lean towards one party or the other?  Most do.  Moreover, if you compare the "leaners" to people who claim to be weak rather than strong partisans (the follow-up question to the admitted partisans), the leaners are more partisan than the weak partisans in nearly every observable respect.  Hence, the phrase my students get beaten into their heads, verbally speaking, so to speak:  leaners are liars.  They are nothing more than closet partisans.  In any given year, between 10 and 15% of the electorate are true independents.  That's it.

OK, I've covered this before.  All of this should mean Howard Schultz crawls back into whatever bog they use to ruin their coffee beans.

The new point for today is about a common theme to which I now return for The Unmutual Political Blog:  Donald Trump-- Social Science Experiment.  One of the common refrains in certain quarters of the political commentariat has always been that the political system requires, not career politicians, but businesspeople.  All hail the Nietzschean (or is it, Rand-ian?) uber-men of the private sector!  Lead us!  Lead us!

So, um, what if we, like, tried it?

Some of you might be thinking, hey!  We're trying that right now!  We threw out the career politicians, didn't elect the one with the impressive CV, and instead elected the BUSINESSMAN!!!!!

We can then make some assessments about the viability of the strategy based on current political circumstances, right?  How is Donald Trump as President?

Here's the problem.  Trump was never really a businessman.  Remember that New York Times expose about how he got all of his money by funneling it from his father through an elaborate tax evasion scheme?  Remember how his "businesses" have a long history of failure?  The money he actually made himself was from going on tv, playing the role of "businessman."  Trump University?  C'mon.

Howard Schultz can sell bad coffee to people at jacked up prices.  That's business, man!  I hate his coffee, but I can recognize the ability to turn an actual profit, rather than just go on tv and posture.

Does that mean he could be president?  That's not actually what I am writing here.  What I am writing is that the experience of Donald Trump says nothing about Schultz.

Look, Howard Schultz will never be president.  Independent candidates can't win.  Maurice Duverger is still right, and Schultz has no clue.  Could a real businessperson be a decent president?  That's a) a separate matter, and b) something that the Trump experience doesn't help us understand.

Instead, maybe we'll just have Herman Cain on the Fed, because why not?  Herman Cain?  On the Fed?  Am I the only one thinking, nein!  Nein!  Nein!  OK, that was way too obvious, I know.  At least Powell is legit, though.

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