The world seems to have changed overnight for Starbucks founder Howard Schultz following his announcement on Sunday night that he was seriously considering an independent run for President. Now, instead of being criticized by Republicans for his liberal leanings and by anyone with functional tastebuds for peddling overpriced, burnt-tasting coffee, liberals are coming after him with figurative pitchforks. He’s in the midst of a tour to promote his new book at the moment, but his book signing event in Union Square, New York City took a turn for the ugly last night. Protesters showed up and began shouting at him, using terms he’s probably not used to hearing from the locals there. (NY Post)

Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz got heckled by protesters calling him an “egotistical billionaire a–hole” and complaining he would help re-elect Trump, as he appeared at a Union Square bookstore Monday, a day after raising the possibility of making a third-party run for president.

“What I said last night is that I’m seriously considering running for president as a centrist independent, and I wanted to clarify the word independent, which I view merely as a designation on the ballot,” Schultz told a crowd at Barnes and Noble…

“Don’t help elect Trump, you egotistical billionaire asshole,” shouted the heckler, who was quickly escorted from the room. “Go back to getting ratioed on twitter. Go back to Davos with the other billionaire elite, who think they know how to run the world.”

Wow. It’s amazing how fast you can go from a liberal icon to “egotistical billionaire a–hole” in the America of 2019, eh? This CNN video captures the heckler in the first fifteen seconds, in case you don’t want to sit through the entire interview.

Go back to Davos? Ouch. That’s a rather awkward complaint from the liberals who generally love the results of the Davos Forum.

But that’s politics in the modern era for you. It’s all about the resistance and tribal loyalties now. Let’s just face the truth here for a moment. If Schultz had gone on 60 Minutes and announced that he was seriously considering running for the Democratic nomination in 2020 we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. He would have been welcomed aboard as one more Democrat in a very crowded field and the cable news networks would have begun polling his chances against the rest of the pack. He’d be a bit of an outlier, of course, but the Democrats would have made room for him on the debate stage alongside the rest.

But by declaring that he might be launching an independent, third-party bid, he immediately became a threat to the rest of the herd. Anyone who might draw votes away from the eventual Democratic nominee and potentially improve Trump’s chances for a second term must immediately be destroyed. So now he’s an “egotistical a-hole who needs to go back to Davos.”

Maybe Frank Luntz was right. Perhaps Schultz is just the guy who can unite the nation, Democrats and Republicans together, in boycotting Starbucks.