Democrats are worrying about former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz running as an independent for president in 2020. They say it will only help President Trump. But the only reason this lifelong Democrat is thinking about an independent bid is because the Democratic party has moved so far to the left.
As soon as Schultz stepped down from his perch at Starbucks last June, speculation arose about his running as a Democrat in 2020. But then, during an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” around that time, Schultz had this to say:
“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,” he said. Then he added: “I think we got to get away from these falsehoods and start talking about the truth and not false promises.”
Schultz went on to say that the greatest threat domestically to the country is “this $21 trillion debt hanging over the cloud of America and future generations. The only way we’re going to get out of that is we’ve got to grow the economy, in my view, 4% or greater. And then we have to go after entitlements.”
To today’s Democrats, Schultz must sound like an alien invader.
He’s asking how to pay for universal health care and guaranteed jobs? Everyone knows it’s by taxing rich people like Schultz. He wants to “go after” entitlements? The party line is to expand all of them. He calls national debt the “greatest threat”? The official position of the Democratic Party is that the greatest threat we face is global warming.
And 4% economic growth? When President Trump promised to deliver growth rates that high, Democrats called him crazy.
But Schultz is absolutely right about his fellow Democrats. As we have pointed out many times in this space, the Democratic Party has veered to the extreme left in recent years. So far, in fact, that it is now embracing an economic agenda that is to the left of any other industrialized nation — including China.
Top Democrats have, for example, bear-hugged Bernie Sanders’ radical “Medicare for all” plan, which promises “free” government-provided health care benefits more generous than any other nation, and that would cost trillions of dollars a year.
The party’s most recent fascination is with “guaranteed jobs,” an idea straight out of the Soviet Union’s constitution that would cost upward of $750 billion a year.
And that’s to say nothing of the party’s promise of free college, student loan forgiveness and various other big ticket items.
As we noted in this space recently, Sanders, a self-described socialist who nearly stole the Democratic nomination from Hillary Clinton, “seems to have opened the way for the mainstreaming of socialism in the Democratic Party.”
In fact, Hillary Clinton recently tried to pin her troubles in the 2016 Democratic primaries on the fact that she was perceived as — gasp — “a capitalist.”
It’s not just party leaders who’ve veered far to the left, but the Democratic base itself. A survey of 1,000 likely Democratic voters taken before the 2016 elections found that nearly 60% said socialism would be great for America. A Pew Research Center report out last year found that while the center of the Republican Party shifted slightly to the right between 1994 and 2017, the center for Democrats moved sharply to the left.
So, it should not come as a surprise that, instead of listening to the more practical-minded Schultz, Democrats immediately tried to force him off the stage.
Helaine Olen, writing in the Washington Post, acknowledges that Schultz was a good liberal when he headed Starbucks. He won kudos for things like providing health benefits to part-time workers, defending gay marriage, offering financial aid for college, and for standing up to Trump on immigration.
But she goes on to complain that Schultz’s “politics are not exactly in sync with the Democratic Party today” and says he “shouldn’t run for president.”
The Daily Beast says Schultz’s resume “seems inherently out of step with a party in which Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Corey Booker, Kamala Harris are luminaries” and that “no one is excited” about him running for president.
Eric Levitz, writing in New York magazine, goes so far as to say that Schulz’s combination of socially liberal and what Levitz calls “fiscally conservative” views “put him on the radical fringe in the United States.” He says Democrats “must reject” Schultz’s “ideology.”
So Schultz, realizing he has no future as a Democrat, announced on “60 Minutes” over the weekend that he’s “seriously thinking of running for president….as a centrist independent, outside of the two-party system.”
“Both parties,” he said, “are consistently not doing what’s necessary on behalf of the American people and are engaged, every single day, in revenge politics.”
That has Democrats starting to worry that a Schultz run could hurt Democratic chances in 2020. Julian Castro, one of several left-liberal Democrats who’ve already announced plans to run in 2020, complained on CNN that “it would provide Donald Trump with his best hope of getting re-elected.”
Maybe Castro and Co. should be focused more on their party’s lurch into the left-wing fringes, which has made it impossible for moderate Democrats like Schultz to find any home there.
Trump wasn’t really a Republican when he ran. Trump adopted some GOP positions, and the establishment GOP adopted some of his (for instance, opposition to free trade and support of severely limited immigration). The Democrats’ screwing over Sanders lost them votes that otherwise would have made Hillary Clinton president.
It’s not as if an independent president would find governing very easy, to have to cobble together coalitions on issues. But it might, depending on who the candidate is, give Americans more palatable choices for president.
Today in 1942 premiered what now is the second longest running program in the history of radio — the BBC’s “Desert Island Discs”:
What’s the longest running program in the history of radio? The Grand Ole Opry.
Today in 1968, the Doors appeared at the Pussy Cat a Go Go in Las Vegas. After the show, Jim Morrison pretended to light up a marijuana cigarette outside. The resulting fight with a security guard concluded with Morrison’s arrest for vagancy, public drunkenness, and failure to possess identification.
The number one British single today in 1969 was its only British number one:
Three days ago, this appeared in my Facebook o’ memories:
That was what happened during the nation’s longest government shutdown. Other than wildcat strikes by people who should not be government employees (air traffic controllers and the Internal Revenue Service), service people who should have been paid but weren’t (Coast Guard), and government services that weren’t provided because they shouldn’t be provided (beer labeling), the “shutdown,” in which 800,000 federal workers went without pay, went by with little notice for Americans who work hard and don’t obsess over politics.
(Just so it’s clear: I could not have cared less, nor could I care less, about the plight of those government workers. None of those federal employees helped anyone who lost their jobs in Barack Obama’s worst recovery in U.S. history. As a friend of mine pointed out, “after missing two paychecks, the government owes $6 billion to 800,000 workers. If my math is correct, that is $97,500 per worker. The median (average) household income in America — not average worker’s salary — is $61,858.” That’s how you know that government employees are overpaid.”)
Unfortunately, the “shutdown” has ended, as reported by the Washington Post:
President Trump on Friday announced a deal with congressional leaders to temporarily reopen the government while talks continue on his demand for border wall money, handing Democrats a major victory in the protracted standoff.
The pact, announced by Trump from the Rose Garden at the White House, would reopen shuttered government departments for three weeks while leaving the issue of $5.7 billion for a U.S.-Mexico border wall to further talks. …
Trump said that a congressional conference committee would spend the next three weeks working in a bipartisan fashion to come up with a border security package.
If a “fair deal” does not emerge by Feb. 15, Trump said, there could be another government shutdown or he could declare a national emergency, a move that could allow him to direct the military to build the wall without congressional consent. Such an action would likely face an immediate legal challenge.
“No border security plan can never work without a physical barrier. It just doesn’t happen,” Trump said in his remarks, during which he dwelled on his arguments for making good on his marquee campaign promise of a wall at the Mexican border.
Since the Dec. 22 start of the partial shutdown, Trump had insisted that Democrats must relent to his demand for wall funding before he would allow the government to reopen. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had insisted on no negotiations until the shutdown ended.
There is really no way to spin this except as Trump’s losing his nerve, unless Trump is really serious about the national emergency thing (which is of dubious constitutionality). For one thing, it apparently ends the possibility of eliminating those jobs.
As someone who did not vote for Trump and correctly supports him when he does the right thing and opposes him when he does the wrong thing, I am agnostic about the wall. But when you campaign on something, if you don’t get what you espouse, you lose, and voters take it out on you and/or your party at their next opportunity.
Politics, remember, is a zero-sum game. One side wins, which means the other side loses. In three weeks, there will be no movement on funding for the wall. Schumer and Pelosi have already said there won’t be. Then what?
Prior to last year, Arkansas schools were required to offer journalism classes as an elective. But many lawmakers voted to remove it, calling it a mandate.
State Rep. Julie Mayberry, R-Hensley, told KATV she was appalled when lawmakers did away with the requirement. That prompted her to file House Bill 1015 this legislative session.
Under Mayberry’s proposed legislation, all Arkansas public schools would be required to offer journalism as an elective. It’s a requirement that she said dates back to 1984.
“Journalism is essential to our American government,” she said. “We have three branches of government so that we have a watch on each department. But who keeps an eye on them? The journalist.”
Mayberry said journalism classes aren’t just about training future journalists but about teaching future generations how to stay informed.
“People are sharing information and not understanding where the source is,” she said. “They’re just trying to get something out there really quickly. And in journalism school we are taught make sure you get the story right, get your facts straight first and then present the story. And that’s not what’s happening right now, so it’s something everybody can learn from.”
Lawmakers against bringing back this requirement said it puts public schools in a difficult position.
“Journalism is a great class,” said state Sen. Trent Garner, R-El Dorado. “I think it’s a great profession. But mandating by the state that every single school teaches it puts a financial strain and other strain on schools. I grew up in a very rural school. My graduating class was 60 people and we barely had enough teachers for Spanish and other kind of basic courses.”
Gov. Asa Hutchinson said in a statement that he opposes the bill on similar grounds.
“I appreciate Rep. Mayberry’s efforts to include journalism in all of our schools, but I believe the decision to do so is best left to local school districts,” he said. “All Arkansas high schools have the option to offer a journalism course, and in fact, the vast majority already do. Journalism is an important area of study, and high school is the perfect place for students to learn the fundamentals of gathering news and checking facts. However, with 38 courses already mandated in every Arkansas public school, another mandate would be burdensome and expensive for many districts—especially those with limited resources.“
Throughout grade school and high school, I was fortunate to participate in quality music programs. Our high school had a top Illinois state jazz band; I also participated in symphonic band, which gave me a greater appreciation for classical music. It wasn’t enough to just read music. You would need to sight read, meaning you are given a difficult composition to play cold, without any prior practice. Sight reading would quickly reveal how fine-tuned playing “chops” really were. In college I continued in a jazz band and also took a music theory class. The experience gave me the ability to visualize music (If you play by ear only, you will never have that same depth of understanding music construct.)
Both jazz and classical art forms require not only music literacy, but for the musician to be at the top of their game in technical proficiency, tonal quality and creativity in the case of the jazz idiom. Jazz masters like John Coltrane would practice six to nine hours a day, often cutting his practice only because his inner lower lip would be bleeding from the friction caused by his mouth piece against his gums and teeth. His ability to compose and create new styles and directions for jazz was legendary. With few exceptions such as Wes Montgomery or Chet Baker, if you couldn’t read music, you couldn’t play jazz. In the case of classical music, if you can’t read music you can’t play in an orchestra or symphonic band. Over the last 20 years, musical foundations like reading and composing music are disappearing with the percentage of people that can read music notation proficiently down to 11 percent, according to some surveys.
Two primary sources for learning to read music are school programs and at home piano lessons. Public school music programs have been in decline since the 1980’s, often with school administrations blaming budget cuts or needing to spend money on competing extracurricular programs. Prior to the 1980’s, it was common for homes to have a piano with children taking piano lessons. Even home architecture incorporated what was referred to as a “piano window” in the living room which was positioned above an upright piano to help illuminate the music. Stores dedicated to selling pianos are dwindling across the country as fewer people take up the instrument. In 1909, piano sales were at their peak when more than 364,500 were sold, but sales have plunged to between 30,000 and 40,000 annually in the US. Demand for youth sports competes with music studies, but also, fewer parents are requiring youngsters to take lessons as part of their upbringing.
Besides the decline of music literacy and participation, there has also been a decline in the quality of music which has been proven scientifically by Joan Serra, a postdoctoral scholar at the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona. Joan and his colleagues looked at 500,000 pieces of music between 1955-2010, running songs through a complex set of algorithms examining three aspects of those songs:
1. Timbre- sound color, texture and tone quality
2. Pitch- harmonic content of the piece, including its chords, melody, and tonal arrangements
3. Loudness- volume variance adding richness and depth
The results of the study revealed that timbral variety went down over time, meaning songs are becoming more homogeneous. Translation: most pop music now sounds the same. Timbral quality peaked in the 60’s and has since dropped steadily with less diversity of instruments and recording techniques. Today’s pop music is largely the same with a combination of keyboard, drum machine and computer software greatly diminishing the creativity and originality. Pitch has also decreased, with the number of chords and different melodies declining. Pitch content has also decreased, with the number of chords and different melodies declining as musicians today are less adventurous in moving from one chord or note to another, opting for well-trod paths by their predecessors. Loudness was found to have increased by about one decibel every eight years. Music loudness has been manipulated by the use of compression. Compression boosts the volume of the quietest parts of the song so they match the loudest parts, reducing dynamic range. With everything now loud, it gives music a muddled sound, as everything has less punch and vibrancy due to compression.
In an interview, Billy Joel was asked what has made him a standout. He responded his ability to read and compose music made him unique in the music industry, which as he explained, was troubling for the industry when being musically literate makes you stand out. An astonishing amount of today’s popular music is written by two people: Lukasz Gottwald of the United States and Max Martin from Sweden, who are both responsible for dozens of songs in the top 100 charts. You can credit Max and Dr. Luke for most the hits of these stars:
Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Kelly Clarkson, Taylor Swift, Jessie J., KE$HA, Miley Cyrus, Avril Lavigne, Maroon 5, Taio Cruz, Ellie Goulding, NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, Ariana Grande, Justin Timberlake, Nick Minaj, Celine Dion, Bon Jovi, Usher, Adam Lambert, Justin Bieber, Domino, Pink, Pitbull, One Direction, Flo Rida, Paris Hilton, The Veronicas, R. Kelly, Zebrahead
With only two people writing much of what we hear, is it any wonder music sounds the same, using the same hooks, riffs and electric drum effects?
Lyric Intelligence was also studied by Joan Serra over the last 10 years using several metrics such as “Flesch Kincaid Readability Index,” which reflects how difficult a piece of text is to understand and the quality of the writing. Results showed lyric intelligence has dropped by a full grade with lyrics getting shorter, tending to repeat the same words more often. Artists that write the entirety of their own songs are very rare today. When artists like Taylor Swift claim they write their own music, it is partially true, insofar as she writes her own lyrics about her latest boyfriend breakup, but she cannot read music and lacks the ability to compose what she plays. (Don’t attack me Tay-Tay Fans!)
Music electronics are another aspect of musical decline as the many untalented people we hear on the radio can’t live without autotune. Autotune artificially stretches or slurs sounds in order to get it closer to center pitch. Many of today’s pop musicians and rappers could not survive without autotune, which has become a sort of musical training wheels. But unlike a five-year-old riding a bike, they never take the training wheels off to mature into a better musician. Dare I even bring up the subject of U2s guitarist “The Edge” who has popularized rhythmic digital delays synchronized to the tempo of the music? You could easily argue he’s more an accomplished sound engineer than a talented guitarist.
Today’s music is designed to sell, not inspire. Today’s artist is often more concerned with producing something familiar to mass audience, increasing the likelihood of commercial success (this is encouraged by music industry execs, who are notoriously risk-averse).
In the mid-1970’s, most American high schools had a choir, orchestra, symphonic band, jazz band, and music appreciation classes. Many of today’s schools limit you to a music appreciation class because it is the cheapest option. D.A. Russell wrote in the Huffington Post in an article titled, “Cancelling High School Elective, Arts and Music—So Many Reasons—So Many Lies” that music, arts and electives teachers have to face the constant threat of eliminating their courses entirely. The worst part is knowing that cancellation is almost always based on two deliberate falsehoods peddled by school administrators: 1) Cancellation is a funding issue (the big lie); 2) music and the arts are too expensive (the little lie).
The truth: Elective class periods have been usurped by standardized test prep. Administrators focus primarily on protecting their positions and the school’s status by concentrating curricula on passing the tests, rather than by helping teachers be freed up from micromanaging mandates so those same teachers can teach again in their classrooms, making test prep classes unnecessary.
What can be done? First, musical literacy should be taught in our nation’s school systems. In addition, parents should encourage their children to play an instrument because it has been proven to help in brain synapse connections, learning discipline, work ethic, and working within a team. While contact sports like football are proven brain damagers, music participation is a brain enhancer.
There was this reaction …
Sorry, it is hard to take this article seriously when it is filled with factual inaccuracies. And to be clear, I am not a “Tay-Tay fan” who is getting defensive because Taylor Swift was attacked, I am a songwriter in my fifties. That said, when you made the statement, “but she cannot read music and lacks the ability to compose what she plays”, that is untrue. Did you research this? Her 2010 album, Speak Now, was written entirely by her, both music and lyrics, and contained some of her biggest hits (“Back To December”, “Mean”, “Mine”). In addition to that, “Love Story” was a huge hit, written only by her. “Should’ve Said No”? Same. She did start to do more co-writing on her last couple of albums, but not because she “lacks the ability to compose what she plays”. Obviously this is not true.
The idea that musical sophistication has been lost, and things need to return to how they were when we were young, has been a losing argument since at least the 1950’s, when parents were outraged that Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly were having huge hits with simple three chord songs. But the kids were loving them. This article seems like the modern version of that concept.
… and counterreaction:
A lot of current poptars use ghostwriters. They don’t get songwriting credit. Look around.
And:
So you don’t like what you hear in current pop music and rather than just ignoring it you gather some pseudo-scientific data to serve your conformation bias. Decline in “timbral variety” – indeed!
Full disclosure: I am 67 years old and as a result have known and seen this atypical attitude come around with every generation, always referring to when things were better in the past.
I personally grew up with the Beatles (who didn’t write/read music – and yet reset the parameters of song writing) but also remember all the junk pop that was around at the same time. I still own some of it on 45rpms.
Pop music is mostly music for kids and while I have sentimental feelings for some of these songs (Herman’s Hermits) I have no illusions of their great musical accomplishments.
As your suggested solution to the imagined problem I would add that many a school music program, and at-home-piano-lesson attitudes, ultimately turned kids off to playing music. (Me, personally. Who has gone on to explore, as a musically literate listener who can not read/write music, the widest range of types of music.)
The whole thing about a limited number of people writing many of the hits – well, what about Goffin/King, Leiber/Stoller, the Gershwins, etc, etc.
Not sure how Billy Joel’s cliched template for pop songs is so different from much of the songs/musicians you mentioned – other than that he could read/write the notes to the arena pop songs.
These days, with the Internet in our homes, there is no reason to listen to mass produced pop, especially if you don’t like it.
There is so much great songwriting and musicianship going on all over the world (though I haven’t checked if the artists read/write music) that there is no reason to try to hyperbolize that things are tragically declining.
And:
Many have known for years that the music quality has diminished especially in pop styles..but few could explain why. As a retired K-12 Public School Music Educator both in choral and band I discovered that convincing young people to actually make music was like being a dentist pulling teeth without Novocaine! They wanted their bubble gum music..only. I had one or two out of every class that really wanted to learn something about singing or playing an instrument. The inspiration was present (examples of composers, music history, instruments being made and played, purchased instruments and put hem in the hands and mouths of the students)…but not taken seriously enough to produce a musician of quality..sad to admit. Now that I am retired.. I MAKE music , using several instruments, compose, ear train, improvise with others in small groups and self, listen to many styles of music from all over the world, ..rather enjoy it too! Perhaps there will be an influx of us who will make music come alive to Americans..if we open up our ears and desire to learn and grow. Music is a communication with the soul of mankind. Lets get with it 🙂
Such aspersions upon Joel require a response:
… all Joel did was create huge albums that got airplay on both pop and rock stations throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Not many rock acts can say that today.
Readers know that band was a highlight of my life in high school and at UW–Madison. (Middle school, not so much, since I had a cranky band director — and truth be told who wouldn’t be faced with us — and was forced to play piano.) Band was a great experience for me, in part because it got me to appreciate music other than what I listened to on the radio. That may not necessarily apply to everyone.
You also know that every decade of music, including the decades I grew up in, included musical dreck, and that the words “quality” and “popularity” are not synonyms. (Consider that Chuck Berry’s only number one hit was “My Ding-a-Ling.”) But it’s revealing that a formula for current pop and country music can be discovered without a lot of work:
It is also not exactly news that record companies are in business to make money. Care to guess why today’s country artists appear to be no one besides babes (usually blonde) and hunks?
Frank Zappa had great insight about the record business decades ago:
As you know, my preferred genre is rock. I know people who deplore what they call “Walmart country,” which, as someone who is not enamored of the my-dog-died/my-mom’s-in-prison/my-truck-blew-up/my-girl-left-me/let’s-go-get-drunk tradition of country, seems more like what pop used to be than what pop is now.
It is rather ironic to me that one of the up-and-coming rock acts, Greta Van Fleet, sounds like an amalgam of Led Zeppelin and Rush:
I cannot say that factually popular music regardless of genre is worse today. It is my opinion that, thanks to such technological innovations as autotuning that covers up lack of performer talent, it is more difficult to find listenable popular music today. Or maybe it’s that finding better music requires more effort today.
On Friday, January 18, a group of white teenage boys wearing maga hats mobbed an elderly Native American man on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, chanting “Make America great again,” menacing him, and taunting him in racially motivated ways. It is the kind of thing that happens every day—possibly every hour—in Donald Trump’s America. But this time there was proof: a video. Was it problematic that it offered no evidence that these things had happened? No. What mattered was that it had happened, and that there was video to prove it. The fact of there being a video became stronger than the video itself.
The video shows a man playing a tribal drum standing directly in front of a boy with clear skin and lips reddened from the cold; the boy is wearing a maga hat, and he is smiling at the man in a way that is implacable and inscrutable. The boys around him are cutting up—dancing to the drumbeat, making faces at one another and at various iPhones, and eventually beginning to tire of whatever it is that’s going on. Soon enough, the whole of the video’s meaning seems to come down to the smiling boy and the drumming man. They are locked into something, but what is it?Twenty seconds pass, then 30—and still the boy is smiling in that peculiar way. What has brought them to this strange, charged moment? From the short clip alone, it is impossible to tell. Because the point of the viral video was that it was proof of racist bullying yet showed no evidence of it, the boy quickly became the subject of rage and disgust. “I’d be ashamed and appalled if he was my son,” the actress Debra Messing tweeted.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 