Several Democratic consultants who have watched Howard Schultz’s rollout, including his CNN town hall this week, said they see a diminished danger. | Joshua Lott/Getty Images 2020 elections 'I feel bad for him at this point': Democrats starting to dismiss Schultz Democratic National Committee members said their fears are eased by what they've seen so far from the billionaire coffee magnate.

Here's how poorly Howard Schultz’s presidential campaign float is going: Democrats who initially reacted with terror that his potential independent bid for president might hand Donald Trump a second term are starting to shrug him off.

While Schultz appeared at a book event in Washington on Thursday, Democratic National Committee members gathered blocks away met the former Starbucks chief executive with a yawn.


“People are not going to waste their vote on that,” said Jaime Harrison, associate chair of the DNC and a former South Carolina state party chair.

Interviews with more than a dozen party officials, activists and operatives at the DNC’s winter meeting depicted a Democratic Party markedly less concerned about Schultz after two weeks of awkward public appearances and critical press surrounding the billionaire. Several Democratic consultants who have watched Schultz’s rollout, including his CNN town hall this week, also told POLITICO they see a diminished danger.

“I feel bad for him at this point,” said Tina Podlodowski, the state Democratic Party chairwoman in Schultz’s home state of Washington.

Concluding that Schultz is “absolutely not” a threat to Democrats in 2020, she said, “From the young voters all the way through seniors, he’s managed to upset most everyone in the United States.”

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Third-party candidates traditionally have had little success in presidential campaigns. But even in losing, they can factor in the outcome. Many Democrats still accuse Ralph Nader and Jill Stein of contributing to losses by Al Gore in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2016, though experts disagree about the effect Nader and Stein had on those races.

In the run-up to 2020, numbers alone suggest Democrats have reason to fret. A POLITICO/Morning Consult poll earlier this month found Democratic voters are more open than Republicans to supporting a third-party candidate, suggesting that Schultz could siphon more votes from a Democrat than from Trump. Thirty-one percent of Democrats say they would consider a third-party candidate, according to the poll, compared to 25 percent of Republicans.

Outside the synagogue where Schultz appeared on Thursday night, about a dozen protesters gathered, with a man on a loudspeaker chanting, “No, Howard, No!” and “Drink Dunkin’ Donuts.” Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” played, and one woman said to her friend, “We should have a sign that says, ‘We bought tickets before we knew’” that Schultz was considering running for president.

Inside the event, when Schultz was mentioned as someone who is “thinking of running for president,” there was little positive reaction from the room.

Schultz, speaking with presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, dwelled on his tough upbringing along with the “romance of espresso” that he first experienced in Milan, Italy. If he was in a rush to talk about his White House ambitions, Schultz didn’t show it.

He joked with Goodwin about how intimidating it was to sit with someone who name drops Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. When the conversation turned to his coffee-drinking habits (four to five cups a day), Schultz joked about the crush of negative media coverage his possible run has generated.

“If you’ve seen the press I’ve gotten the last three weeks, I think we could use a little decaf now,” Schultz said to nervous laughter.

Asked by a 19-year-old student why he continues to believe that now is the time to run — particularly given the risks of reelecting Trump — Schultz took aim at the two-party system, “revenge politics,” his fears of rising socialism and the “sense of sadness in the country.”

Pausing, Schultz stressed that he won’t be a spoiler, but cautioned that he likely won’t decide on whether to run until late spring, or even early summer.

“That decision will be made because I will have done the work, the research, the polling to believe that the math will work,” Schultz said. “If we look at the results of all the research we’re doing and all the data and it’s clear that there’s no path, I’m not going to do anything to be a disruptive force. But I do believe at this moment in time that it’s too early to make that kind of decision and it’s too early to rush to judgment.”

Schultz lamented Trump’s stewardship of the country and his lack of accountability — seeming careful to spend as much time, if not more, bashing the president as he does Democrats.

Emphasizing his point, he pledged that he would “do everything humanly possible not to see Donald Trump become president in 2020 … I can promise you all nobody wants to see him fired more than me.”

Democrats aren't as worried as they once were that Schultz would hurt their chances in 2020. As Schultz’s exploration of a presidential campaign has unfolded, the gulf exposed between his politics and those of the Democratic Party’s base has only lessened Democrats’ fears. At a CNN town hall this week, Schultz said it was "premature” to say if he would divest his Starbucks holdings if elected. He said he should be paying more taxes, but he declined to offer a rate.

On race relations, he was pilloried by Democrats when he said, “I honestly don’t see color.”

In addition to Schultz’s politics, the relatively low viewership of the town hall further eased some Democrats’ minds.

“I just don’t see voters clamoring for an out-of-touch, arrogant billionaire who thinks he knows more than anybody else,” said Ben Tulchin, a Democratic pollster who worked on Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. “I just think he’s more likely to attract country club Republicans.”

As far as Democrats go, he said, “I just don’t see any kind of opening for him,” adding that “if there’s no opening for him, then there’s no harm.”

Daily Kos national community organizer Chris Reeves, a DNC member from Kansas, predicted the effect of Schultz, if he runs, would not resemble that of Nader or Stein, but rather Greg Orman, the independent candidate for Kansas governor in 2018.

In internal tracking polls last year, Reeves said, Democrat Laura Kelly, who would go on to win election, appeared unaffected by Orman, despite vocal concern by many Democrats that Orman could draw votes from her and hand the election to Republican Kris Kobach.

On Election Day, he said, “Our internal tracking looked really good, but there were a lot of Democrats who told us we think we’re screwed, so they showed up at higher rates.”

“Schultz provides us an opportunity the same way Orman did in Kansas," Reeves said. "It helps gin up our base.”