Campaign 2020 January 28, 2019

Michael Bloomberg To Howard Schultz: “There Is No Way An Independent Can Win”

BONN, GERMANY - NOVEMBER 11: American businessman Michael Bloomberg is seen prior to a discussion at the America's Pledge launch event at the U.S. "We Are Still In" pavilion at the COP 23 United Nations Climate Change Conference on November 11, 2017 (Photo by Lukas Schulze/Getty Images)

Michael Bloomberg has been a Republican, Independent and now a Democrat. He’s also a billionaire who’s still flirting with his own run for president. So who better to give former CEO Howard Schultz some advice about running for president as an independent. In short–no way it will work. Here is Bloomberg’s statement:

Last fall I spent over $100 million of my own money to elect Democrats to the House because I believed it was absolutely imperative to ensure a congressional counterweight to President Trump.

Thankfully, we were successful. But that was just the first step — the next and most important step is to defeat Donald Trump in 2020.

Now I have never been a partisan guy — and it’s no secret that I looked at an independent bid in the past. In fact I faced exactly the same decision now facing others who are considering it.

The data was very clear and very consistent. Given the strong pull of partisanship and the realities of the electoral college system, there is no way an independent can win. That is truer today than ever before.

In 2020, the great likelihood is that an independent would just split the anti-Trump vote and end up re-electing the President. That’s a risk I refused to run in 2016 and we can’t afford to run it now.

We must remain united, and we must not allow any candidate to divide or fracture us. The stakes couldn’t be higher.

Sidenote–who is wealthier?

Michael Bloomberg is worth more than $45 billion.

Howard Schultz comes in at around $3 billion.