• "I hear and respect this overriding concern, and have repeatedly promised that I will not be a spoiler. I am committed to ensuring that I will do nothing to re-elect Donald Trump. I mean it." 

"Will the eventual Democratic nominee be the party’s own version of a spoiler?" Schultz writes in the letter, which is being emailed to supporters and pushed through social media.

• Translation: Will the nominee be so liberal that Trump can sweep in centrist votes?

☕ Schultz's tour continues at San Francisco's Commonwealth Club today, and in Santa Monica (moderated by Maria Shriver) on Thursday.

• Read the letter.

Go deeper:

• Howard Schultz knows some Dems are going to hate him
• Livid liberals try to bully Schultz out of 2020
• Starbucks has a 2020 problem

• The Green New Deal introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become a powerful symbol of the issue that President Trump teed up in his State of the Union address when he said: "[W]e renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country."
• The liberal proposals of Democrats' 2020 candidates, most notably Sen. Elizabeth Warren's "wealth tax," give Republicans more ammunition.
• Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tells Fred Barnes in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece about Ocasio-Cortez: "I can pretty safely say this is the first time in my political career that I thought the essence of America was being debated."

Republicans have long demagogued by branding Democrats "socialists." Now, some Democrats are helping by self-identifying.

• The term — rarely defined by those who throw it around — packed more of a punch when the memory of the Cold War was fresh.
• Polling shows younger Americans are souring on capitalism, and don’t find the label "socialist" so scary.
• And an Axios/SurveyMonkey poll last month found 70% of voters want the economic system reformed, with 58% saying it's skewed toward the wealthy.
• So soaking the rich may turn out to be pretty darn popular.

Republicans taking an early victory lap on "socialism" may eventually find it hard to defend not raising taxes on billionaires. And the 2020 Democrats are wary of being branded "socialist":

• Even Warren has said: "I am a capitalist."
• And Sen. Kamala Harris said yesterday in New Hampshire: "I am not a democratic socialist."

Be smart: Republicans are loving the moment but are rightly wary: They know it could change quickly — either because of something Trump says or new facts that emerge from investigations by special counsel Robert Mueller or House Democrats.

Go deeper:

• Trump's lifeline: Democrats' socialism surge
• Trump's 2020 vision: America First vs. socialism
• Exclusive poll: Americans want economic reform in 2020

McAuliffe — who tells the story in his book coming July 16, "Beyond Charlottesville: Taking a Stand Against White Nationalism" — was about to give a press conference. Trump, who was at his club in Bedminster, N.J., was also about to speak. McAuliffe told the president to go first, and said he'd wait.

• Watching on TV as he prepared to go to the microphones, McAuliffe then saw Trump blame "many sides."
• "I fully believed he’d do the right thing," McAuliffe told me in an interview. "I was shocked."
• "There was so many lessons learned coming out of Charlottesville," the former governor added. "I had the front-row seat, calling the shots. Someone had to write it."

The book, from the Thomas Dunne Books imprint of St. Martin’s Press, is — sadly — newly relevant after the blackface controversy in the government he left behind. Gov. Ralph Northam was lieutenant governor under McAuliffe.

• McAuliffe, who had been working on the book for the past nine or 10 months, is likely to add an epilogue on the scandal.
• "It's embarrassing," McAuliffe said. "It's a state that I'm very proud of."