It depends on what his staffers tell him to do. They’ll look at the research like that recent pew study that was showing 49% of boomer republican ssupporting legal marijuana, and over 50% of genX republicans supporting it.
Trump holds no concrete positions as we all know. Theres a very real possibility that his campaign decides to pull the trigger on legalizing marijuana, and knowing the trump cultists, they will follow him to death even if it means legalizing weed even if they disagreed with it their entire lives they will change their mind for him. I forget the study but there was one I saw that said something along the lines of majority of trump supporters cannot think of anything that would change their mind to vote for trump. Basically trump is immune, he can do whatever he wants and his base will follow, and ofc the republicans will follow too because they want to line their pockets.
Edit: To emphasize this point, In trumps book he advocated for Universal Healthcare, citing it would be good for businesses and increase employee wages. He even hinted at support for universal healthcare during the 2016 campaign. Yet he changed his position he held for years instantly overnight because his camp calculated it would be a good move. So if they do the same for weed, if he thinks he can pull those independent and fake dems, he’s going to do it, and it’ll work imo.
Biden did not backtrack. His position remains the same as he made out six months ago as I posted above. It did not register outrage then. His position is pretty identical to the position Hillary Clinton took and it didn’t cost her in the primary. And in the GE Donald Trump did not go as far as her stance on marijuana. He generally ducked the questions never taking beyond state rights.
Why do you feel Sanders can’t win the primary? The liberal vote is pretty strongly for him or warren and liberals make up about half of democratic voters. That alone should give him a good chance. Liberals (and tea party conservatives) are overrepresented in politics. I think liberals make up 10% of the public, but they make up 16% of registered voters and 25% of actual voters (ie, they get more involved in politics). So you’d assume in primaries they are if anything higher than 50% of democratic voters.
Black voters make up about 1/4 of democratic voters. They don’t connect with Sanders, they prefer Biden more. Which is fine.
I ‘think’ the other 1/4 of democratic voters are latinos, moderate democrats, etc. They may not prefer Sanders but like black people I am sure they’d vote for him over Trump in a general.
There is a core group of Dems that just see Sanders as a carpetbagger and that he helped get Trump elected. I am quite confident he can’t get majority support even in a brokered convention situation.
I see zero point in addressing your vague yet specifically numbered demographic recollections and ruminations.
That core group is referred to as the establishment.
Those voters are referred to as low informed, and or centrist.
Sanders didn’t help Trump get elected, on the contrary the DNC rigging their primaries against sanders, the media sweeping him under the rug while giving Trump billions in free air time, is what gave Trump the win. If they had pushed Sanders instead of Hillary, we would not have lost 2016.
Also how confident are you? Are you willing to place money on that? Personally, I have. So which one of us is more confident?
I’m an undecided Democratic voter in Michigan. I 100% support the legalization of weed, and voted for it in the recent statewide referendum to legalize it. This “announcement” by Biden doesn’t make me any less likely to vote for him in either the primary or general.
In fact, I suspect most people who “favor” it just don’t give a shit about marijuana, but don’t think it makes sense to criminalize it any more. Anecdotally speaking, that’s my take on it, and that was the reason my 72-year-old evangelical Democrat mom voted to legalize it too. I have no plans to smoke or otherwise ingest it after it becomes legal here for recreational use on December 1. In addition, most cities across Michigan, despite overwhelming support from voters for legalizing it, are still banning retail locations. And that tells me that just because people are good with legalizing it doesn’t mean people are clamoring for it, either for their own personal use or as a campaign talking point.
(in Maurey’s voice from Big Mouth) Stupid oldie. Meanwhile these watermelon flaved gummy bears are making me fully desire the samples we got from the government in the ‘80s. Right, Connie?
Connie: Oh, hell yeah, ya grey-haired lovin-boy toy. Mmm-mmm, old Biden be competin’ with Mommy-lovin’ Pencey-poo only for an extra blanket. And it got all them capital Ts all over it. Smells like old vodka and baaaaad steak.
I recall reading about some Dutch people who never smoked weed at home, where it’s legal, but smoked it as tourists in the U.S. just for the thrill of doing something illegal!
Black voters overwhelmingly voted for Hillary over Bernie. And they form the bulk of Biden’s support as represented by his numbers in the Southern states. I would be very careful about using the expression “low informed voters”.
OK, I retract my previous post, which was purely a response to the OP, and I now see that the title misrepresented what Biden said. It made it sound like he wanted no changes at all to existing federal law. Decriminalizing cannabis (not legalizing), removing it from Schedule 1 which essentially deems it a dangerous narcotic, and leaving legalization decisions to the individual states, is in my view exactly the right thing to do.
FTR, the present legal status of cannabis in federal law is largely due to the aforementioned Harry Anslinger, who back in the 20s and early 30s had been head of Prohibition enforcement and was a self-serving racist asshole looking for something to do when Prohibition inevitably ended. Suffice it to say that this is one of his more famous quotes: “Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men. There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.”
The Schedule 1 classification of cannabis, the same classification as heroin, is largely due to the legacy of Harry Anslinger.
Are you saying that supporters of legal marijuana are so out of it (for reasons I shall not imply) that they will vote for the Muslim ban guy who was impeached by the House in hopes that Trump doesn’t backtrack on his transparent and lame attempt at triangulation?
Insofar as it currently stands, weed IS a gateway drug. It is usually the first drug any drug user tries. It gets them in the door. Some happen to move on to other drugs.
Some never do. But as a gateway to illegal drug use, weed is most folks first step.
Legalizing weed would remove the gateway aspect to drugs because it is no longer the first baby step to potentially harder drugs.
His thinking will evolve on this just like Obama’s thinking on gay marriage.
He loses almost no votes for saying this (seriously, no one is going to go from Biden to Trump over this, noone) and he gains electability in exurb/rural areas.
Suck it up. I’m voting for the democrat even though they all support stupid forms of gun control. If you want a candidate that agrees with you on everything, you have to run.
There was a rise in cocaine and heroin use during prohibition. Illegal drugs are the gateway to other illegal drugs.
Legalize alcohol and all of a sudden speakeasies no longer want to jeopardize their liquor license by selling cocaine.
Organized crime no longer has a line of customers coming to them for one drug, giving them an opportunity to sell other drugs.
OTOH. legalizing (and taxing) weed increases consumption. High taxes means that the legal weed will be better quality because the tax per gram is so high the retail difference between ditch weed and humbolt county skunk becomes negligible. So the ditch weeds gets sold on the street for 1980’s prices because the cost of doing business is limited to loss of product and a misdemeanor (like selling unstamped cigarettes). Noone is going to kill you over it. Lower prices = higher consumption.
There’s a lot of people that are not sure that M4A is the best next step. A public option seems more palatable to a lot of people that already have private health insurance.
Disclosure, I don’t really support Butigieg, I support whoever can deliver the most decisive electoral victory over Trump. I don’t want to win by a little bit, I want the win to be so overwhelming that no one will ever be tempted to nominate someone like him again. If that candidate is someone that I disagree with on 40% of the issues, then so be it.
Wait is this an argument about what you think voters will support, or which is better? For the former, last polls I saw had M4A over 60% and for the latter under Bernie’s M4A bill you’d have all the coverage your insurance provides probably more and you would see more money in your pocket when you subtract the cost of your private healthcare from what tax increase you probably will see. All grey area coverage and cosmetics would get picked up by private insurance. Pete recently got boo’d for making the bogus claim of having an option of M4A or not. Voters who aren’t dedicated to a certain candidate understand the nuance, you either diminish priv reliance or you don’t.
This is why most of us Dems don’t support Sanders. The whole “we wuz robbed, the elections were rigged” ignores the fact that the POPULAR vote was overwhelmingly in Hillarys favor. It also ignores the fact that the Kremlin supported Sanders so that Trump could win and the fact that the skeletons in Bernies closet hadnt been disclosed yet by the GOP. And you Bernie Bros keep bringing it up, over and over and over and over, even in threads where it has no relevance is annoying.