Howard Schultz, the President of coffee, has been suggested (by…someone) as a potential game-changing Democratic candidate for those weary from Clinton fatigue. The Starbucks CEO has declared he’s not running, but he apparently loved being seriously considered (by…someone). Taking precious time from getting me my fucking five-dollar frappuccino while I stand here waiting, Schultz has penned a New York Times op-ed in perfect politician speak.

In it, he feigns that Washington gridlock is the result of equivalent irresponsibility of both parties rather than due to the modern GOP being insane, a time-tested gambit to make it appear one’s above the fray. He also declares from within his CEO bubble that “I have no intention of entering the presidential fray. I’m not done serving at Starbucks,” as if those two “nations” were equal. Well, in all fairness to him, only one of them is turning a profit. Schultz thinks we can improve as a country if we just embrace those different from us and try working together. Too bad Obama didn’t think of that.

At any rate, I should be grateful for the rare corporate executive who realizes the American middle class is going, going, gone–even if he might be adding to the problem. An excerpt:

Our nation has been profoundly damaged by a lack of civility and courage in Washington, where leaders of both parties have abdicated their responsibility to forge reasonable compromises to expand the economy, rebuild our infrastructure, improve schools, transform entitlement programs and so much more. We have become too desensitized to the horrendous metrics that define today’s America, from student-loan debt to food-stamp dependency to the size of our prison population.

As a boy growing up in public housing in Brooklyn, I was told by my mother that I could be the first in my family to graduate from college. A scholarship and an entry-level job at Xerox created a path upward that was typical for many of my generation.

For too many Americans, the belief that propelled me, that I had the opportunity to climb the ladder of prosperity, has greatly diminished. I hear it from coast to coast as I sit with customers in our stores. Six in 10 Americans believe that the younger generation will not be better off than their parents. Millennials have never witnessed politics devoid of toxicity. Anxiety, not optimism, rules the day.•