How dumb is the 2020 presidential election campaign going to be? Unfathomably dumb. Breathtakingly dumb. Seriously; pretty dumb.

And that’s just among the mainstream candidates. Just wait and see what happens if an independent billionaire jumps in the race.

Exhibit A this week: Howard Schultz, the former chief executive officer of Starbucks, is reportedly mulling a third-party or independent run for president. Schultz, a longtime Democrat, says both parties are hopelessly dysfunctional. (Which is undeniably true.) Neither political party, for example, is lifting a finger to address the $21.9 trillion national debt.

Exhibit A-1: Schultz appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski on Wednesday, where he was interrogated about, wait for it, the price of a box of Cheerios.

Schultz was shocked to learn that Cheerios cost around four bucks—or less than a triple grande mocha. (But not nearly as delicious.) It also has nothing to do with the national debt, or immigration, or foreign policy, or anything else worth discussing.

Does it matter that a billionaire ex-CEO doesn’t know how much a box of cereal costs? Only if you’re in the business of asking stupid gotcha questions on television. I don’t know how much Cheerios cost, either. I don’t even eat cereal. Do you?

Maybe the better question is what Schultz has to offer that any of the other dozen or so Democratic candidates for president do not . . .

Read the rest at the Sacramento Bee.

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