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posted by martyb on Wednesday August 26 2020, @08:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the plans-going-up-in-smoke dept.

Trump Is Petrified That Pro-Weed Forces Will Roast Him:

The president and some of his team, already obsessed with the potential drop-off of various demographic groups that make up his battered coalition, have begun openly worrying that the drive to legalize or decriminalize marijuana might hurt him and fellow Republicans at the ballot box.

According to two GOP strategists who've independently discussed the topic with Trump this year, the president believes that inclusion of marijuana initiatives on state ballots could supercharge turnout for voters who lean toward Democratic candidates and causes. The president, according to one of the sources, asked for updates on critical swing-states that could see such ballot measures in the 2020 elections.

"The president is keenly aware of how presidential elections [nowadays]... can be won at the margins," one of the Republican strategists said. "The pot issue is one of many that he thinks could be a danger... He once told me it would be very 'smart' for the Democrat[ic] Party to get as many of these on the ballot as they could."

Decades ago, Trump had publicly advocated full-on legalization, arguing that "we're losing badly the war on drugs," and that "you have to legalize drugs to win that war. You have to take the profit away from these drug czars." During this iteration of his political identity, he put the blame on politicians who "don't have any guts" to tackle drug legalization.

But by his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump had come out "strongly" against legal weed. By the time he reached the Oval Office, he was enthusiastically proposing executing drug dealers by firing squad. And his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, revoked an Obama-era guidance that discouraged the feds from prosecuting marijuana-based criminal cases in states where it was legal.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 26 2020, @06:14PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 26 2020, @06:14PM (#1042293)

    it doesn't matter what kind of lame candidate we have. it's about ballot and debate access. can you imagine a competent libertarian in a debate with the puppets of the two major parties?

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 26 2020, @07:34PM (1 child)

    by Thexalon (636) on Wednesday August 26 2020, @07:34PM (#1042333)

    Johnson / Weld was the most credible ticket I've seen from the Libertarians in my lifetime. And I think that was at least somewhat reflected in the election results, although they were also helped in a big way by how bad the Democratic and Republican candidates were.

    But the Libertarians have the same problem the Greens have: They have a tough time getting local traction without a strong national presence, and they have a tough time getting a strong national presence without local traction, and the Democrats and Republicans collectively control elections and things like the debate commission, which makes it hard for them to be taken seriously.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2020, @07:03PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2020, @07:03PM (#1042846)

      i didn't like johnson/weld for shit, but i still voted L. i didn't know who badnarik was until after the fact, but he seemed way more legit that J/W. i would have preferred kokesh won the nomination this time, but i understand that wouldn't have been very practical. i'm not too concerned with practical.