Democrats panic over independent candidates.

Venezuela approaches chaos, and Virginia is now pushing hard left abortion policy.

I'm Ben Shapiro. This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

Oh man, we have a lot to get to today, a lot in the news.

People very angry on the Democratic side of the aisle at Howard Schultz.

And quick note, there's a lot of news today out about the supposed wage gap between men and women. Quick shout out to my wife, who stayed up all night long with my daughter. She has the flu and the cough. And my wife, being an actual feminist, actually stayed up all night long with my daughter because she is the best wife in the world. So shout out to you, honey. I never do that on the show, but you deserve it this morning. We'll get to all of the actual news in just one second. But first, let me talk about what I'm going to do for my wife today. I'm going to order her a batch from 1,800 flowers, because if you are in a relationship, and there are a couple important dates that you have to remember, there's Valentine's Day, birthdays, anniversaries, or the day after your wife stays up all night taking care of your sick kids so you can get a little bit of sleep.

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Okay, so Democrats are in a state of sheer panic over Howard Schultz, which is amazing.

The guy is not exactly lighting up the world with his charisma and good looks.

He's not George Clooney, Howard Chultz.

He's a former CEO of Starbucks, a large coffee chain that most people have at least mixed feelings about, and yet he is scaring the devil out of Democrats. I mean, they are scared of him, and they're scared of Michael Bloomberg, too. They're scared more of Schultz than Bloomberg, because Bloomberg has suggested he's going to run as a Democrat in the Democratic primaries, and they figure he's not going to go anywhere in the Democratic primaries. There's just no real chance that he ends up doing anything spectacular there. He's not intersectional enough. He's too moderate. So they figure, okay, we'll get rid of him the same way we got rid of Jim Webb in 2016. He'll just sort of fade out into the distance of his own accord. But somebody running as an independent it changes the math pretty radically. And Democrats are really scared of Schultz, which is why you are seeing the virulent reaction to Schultz. I mean, people are angry at him. People are so angry at him that he went on MSNBC this morning. And he said, like, I've never seen the vitriol like this, which suggests that as we in the political business like to say, you're not taking flack unless you are over the target. Well, this has led some members of the media to try to hit Schultz with gotcha questions. So the line of attack on Schultz is going to be that he is a delusional billionaire, that he happens to be extraordinarily rich, and that's the only reason he's considering running. And because he is both delusional and a billionaire, that means he is out of touch. He's out of touch with the common American person. Now, let me just explain at the top. The number of politicians who are really in touch with the common American in Washington, D.C. is zero. There are no politicians in Washington, D.C. that you know or I know who who are really in touch with the common man, people who actually have to scrape to save for a box of Cheerios, for example.

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