Is Clarence Thomas retiring soon? Is Howard Schultz running for president?

Since the summer of 2016 there have been intermittent rumblings that Clarence Thomas was going to retire fairly soon, based apparently on the supposed fact that he has no interest in dying on the Court. Thomas will be 71 in June and he’s been on the SCOTUS for more than 27 years now.  Giving Donald Trump another Supreme Court seat to fill seems like exactly the kind of thing Thomas would do to piss off liberals, which seems to have been the overriding motivation of his career ever since he was subjected to a high tech lynching  questions about his behavior toward Anita Hill. So I would guess there’s a pretty good chance he’ll step down at some point in the next 18 months or so.

In further 2020-related news, Howard Schultz, former CEO of Starbucks, is seriously contemplating an independent run for president.  Schultz is purportedly a lifelong Democrat, but he seems to be the type of “liberal” who is in favor of Republican-style plutocracy, minus the overt racism.  This of course makes him the sort of centrist so beloved of the elite media pundit class, which as far as I can tell represents the sole actual constituency for this kind of thing (see Bloomberg, Michael).

Democratic strategerists are already worried about Schultz, but I would imagine this sort of vanity campaign, to the extent it has any effect at all, is more likely to peel off traditional Republican voters who can’t quite stomach Donald Trump’s white supremacy.  But it’s never too early to start fretting:

“Trump’s strategy has always been divide and conquer, and this plays directly into his hands,” said one Democratic strategist, who was wary of taking on Schultz openly ahead of any announcement. “He’s Ralph Nader without any of Nader’s redeeming qualities. What’s his value proposition for America? Make America like a corporate chain?”

Ralph Nader’s redeeming qualities are at this point an empty set, but otherwise yeah.