Ryan Grim at Huffington Post reports on the notion going round political circles that California's Prop 19 (and, to a lesser extent, medical marijuana initiatives in Arizona and South Dakota, and dispensaries for medical marijuana in Oregon) will be for the Democrats what anti-Gay Marriage Equality amendments were for Republicans - the turn-out-the-base social wedge issue that helps their candidates on the ballot.
...Democrats are in for a surprise. See, Karl Rove and the Republicans really believed in the initiatives they were pushing. They had a frame for it - "one man one woman" - that resonated with their voters and the overall worldview espoused by most of their downticket candidates. So when that Religious Right base came out in 2004, energized to vote against dreaded homosexuals and for the continuation of all that was good, true, and Christian in America, they had George W. Bush and a whole slew of Republicans to vote for that echoed that sentiment.
What do Democrats have to offer the cannabis consumer who comes out for a 2010 election? Unlike Rove and the Republicans, the Democrats don't really believe in these initiatives (publicly). Sen. Boxer, Sen. Feinstein (a former mayor of San Francisco, c'mon now!), and former Gov. / current AG Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown all publicly oppose Prop 19...
...[In 2008, social liberals] "surged", in the real world and especially online, and got Obama elected. We even got him a massive majority in Congress. We were thrilled when he asked us online what items we'd like to see on the new administration's agenda and multiple times we responded with "legalize marijuana", topping almost every public survey and dominating with 16 of the top 50 questions in the largest survey. So what did we get in response? Something we in marijuana law reform simply call "The Chuckle"
...Republicans already have the frames of "small government", "personal responsibility", and "states rights" to work within. If marijuana legalization in California passes by a wide margin and sees support from the women, minorities, and young people the GOP desperately needs to rebuild their party, how long before they begin framing the War on Drugs as the "big government", "nanny state", and "federal overreach" that it is? ...They can easily point to the Democratic Congresses of the 1980s that created the mandatory minimums and the last three Democratic presidents who supported decriminalization and inhaled or didn't inhale yet arrests kept increasing (at the greatest rate under Clinton, they'll note).
...Just in time for 2012 when a vocally pro-marijuana legalization, anti-prohibition former governor of New Mexico named Gary Johnson will be fighting for the Republican nomination.
The Obama Administration has been incredibly tone deaf and outright offensive about the issues that brought out the base in 2010, from gay rights to cannabis-law modification to women's reproductive choice to overturning the abuses of power of the Bush administration in regard to FISA, for instance, while seemingly engaged in an effort to court the social/religious conservative Republican and Democratic Dixiecrat base that comprises a smaller number of voters than the liberal and libertarian free market one (based upon Pew polling from 2008 that divided voters into voting and economic sectors.)
This tact would appear to relate to the Democratic idea that social liberals have no other party to vote for and to Rahm Emmanuel's view of the liberal base as "fucking retards."
The Dixiecrats and their kissing cousins in states like Nebraska (Ben Nelson) threaten to alienate the Democratic base from the party - while offering little in return for this pandering if you look at Nelson's votes, for instance.
Democrats seem to be fighting the political wars of the 1980s and the 1990s while defining themselves in terms derived from the Republican attack machine, rather than creating a truly hopeful vision for an America in a new millennium.
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