Donald Trump has set a low bar for other billionaires who are contemplating a run for the White House.

Why not me, they ponder? Trump had no experience in government before he won the 2016 Republican nomination. He was just a popular TV reality star who branded his name on every piece of real estate he built. He wasn’t even that successful in business, going bankrupt more than once. He’s a lazy-bones, too, rarely hitting the Oval Office until 11.30am, according to Axios, which obtained his daily schedules. His approval ratings may never again cross 40%. If President Trump runs again, he certainly looks beatable.

The latest self-deluded billionaire to be fooled by this magical thinking is Howard Schultz, the former CEO of Starbucks. He’s out hawking a book in hopes of boosting his name recognition and telling interviewers he’s “strongly considering” a presidential run as an independent. It’s completely unclear what, beyond his money (he could self-finance a national campaign) and ego is compelling him to run.

So far the reception to a Schultz independent bid has been something between fury and ridicule

He’s only entered the public’s consciousness, if at all, as the founder and former chairman Starbucks. It’s a well-known brand, but Schultz isn’t even known as the company’s public face.

So far the reception to a Schultz independent bid has been something between fury and ridicule, especially on social media. A lifelong Democrat, he’s seen as a spoiler for the eventual Democratic nominee. “Why don’t people ever tell billionaires who want to run for President that they need to ‘work their way up’ or that ‘maybe they should start with city council first’?” said the new Democratic sensation, New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, on her Twitter page on Wednesday. The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson summed up the icy reception Schultz is getting from media pundits in a column headlined, “This is no time for Howard Schultz’s Foolishness”.

Still, the incipient Schultz for President bandwagon has recruited presidential campaign veterans such as Democrat Bill Burton, an Obama campaign strategist and Republican Steve Schmidt of the McCain presidential campaign. Schmidt, who often appears as a pundit on MSNBC, detests President Trump.

Is an independent candidate electable? Michael Bloomberg, 76, who besides being former New York City mayor is a billionaire media executive, considered running for president as an independent. His political inner circle did all kinds of polling looking for an independent route to the White House in 2016. But the answer was no.

Now he is reportedly considering a campaign for president as a Democrat in 2020, concluding that it would be his only path to the White House. But his stands on many economic issues, including bank regulation, and stop-and-frisk police tactics, are sharply at odds with progressive Democrats.

In recent years, he’s earned the hearts of some Democrats by spending $80m to flip control of the House of Representatives from Republican to Democrats in 2018 and for spending millions more on anti-gun campaigns.

In modern times, the closest any independent candidate came to winning was another billionaire businessman, Ross Perot, who ran as an independent in 1992 and 1996. He received 18.9% of the vote in 1992, running on a platform of balancing the budget. His independent candidacy was thought to have hurt President George HW Bush’s re-election and helped Democrat Bill Clinton unseat him.

Then came 2000. Ralph Nader ran for president on the Green party ticket and in a razor-thin, stalemated election between Al Gore and George W Bush, Nader was pretty clearly a spoiler for Gore. Although he had enjoyed a career as a successful consumer advocate and champion of other liberal causes, he was condemned by many Democrats for helping to elect Bush by draining away Gore votes in Florida.

If Trump runs for re-election and is beaten, he will be beaten by a Democrat, not by a quixotic independent

Tom Steyer, a California philanthropist and activist with many millions to spend on politics, has also flirted with a presidential run. He almost certainly would have run as a Democrat but instead has decided to put his money to work in a drive to impeach President Trump. He’s already spent $120m on the impeachment effort and recently announced a $40m television ad buy. At least he’s espoused an important issue and has a clear message.

Not so for Schultz who bungled initial interviews and failed to provide a compelling rationale for his bid. Besides the difficulty of running without a party affiliation, Schultz seems to be operating under the assumption that American voters will still fall for an outsider with no experience or achievement in government. He seems to not realize that Donald Trump has ruined the chances of winning the White House for both billionaires and outsiders.

The Democrats already have a field of attractive, experienced politicians who have announced for president or are itching to run but haven’t declared. (Former Vice-President Joe Biden, as well as Bloomberg, are said to be in this camp.) If Trump runs for re-election and is beaten, he will be beaten by a Democrat, not by a quixotic independent. The Democratic field isn’t full of wide-eyed liberals, as Schultz seems to think, and the issues they are already discussing, like universal health coverage as good as Medicare, free college and raising taxes on the wealthy would move the country in a good direction.

That’s why President Trump and the Republicans are welcoming Howard Schultz with open arms. They are praying for a spoiler.

Yet no one except the most avid Starbucks customer is going to give Howard Schultz a serious look. “The truth is the guy has announced for president, gotten an enormous amount of coverage and doesn’t appear to have support from anybody,” said the University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato.

It’s an embarrassing political mistake, venti.