I don't know if my handle gives it away, but I smoke weed, on occasion. I'm not as big a pothead as my handle suggests - it was the name I used for playing Unreal Tournament and it became my sort of default internet name in college, but I still smoke every now and again.
Of course, I'm for legalization, but I'm not a radical about it. It doesn't bother me that Obama isn't out there doing everything he can RIGHT NOW to get this grave injustice off the books. I think that legalization, like gay marriage, is something that is going to work its way through the states, and once it's been tried out in the more progressive states, the others will fall into place eventually (decriminalization is like civil unions in this comparison). And let's face it, doing this on a federal level when only a handful of states - if that - are even DISCUSSING the possibility would cost Obama buckets of political capital, at a time when we need all the capital we can get to haul the economy into the 21st Century.
But I do have a problem with the way the President answered the Town Hall question on marijuana. Specifically, I want to know why he felt the need to diss his core constituency.
Am I saying that Barack Obama's core constituency is potheads? No. But Obama made it seem that way, with that snarky "I don't know what this says about our on-line audience" remark. As a member of that on-line audience, let me say a few things about us.
First of all, not all of us smoke weed. Not even all of the people who are interested in the question - which was, by the way, a MUCH more intelligent and relevant query than Obama made it out to be when he edited it for his conference - smoke. Many people see the economic destress our country is in, we see the shape Mexico is in, we see how many people are preposterously in prison for victimless crimes, costing the taxpayers God know how much money in legal fees and the cost of incarceration, and we see how the government is hell-bent on flushing billions of dollars down the toilet in their "War on Drugs" (by the way, you have to be way higher than I have ever been in order to declare war on an abstract concept, and I've been pretty freaking stoned), and we wonder if maybe a radical departure from past protocols may be in order. It's not because we want to be able to go down to the store and buy a case of joints every day and go home and smoke until we can't stand up. Some people may want to do that, but of course, we have no problem with people who do that with, say beer, which makes you act much more obnoxiously, but I'm digressing.
Secondly, and this might be of more relevance, but we kind of got Barack Obama elected President. The people who "attend" his e-events on-line are the same people who watch his weekly addresses on YouTube, the same people who get his e-mails and write our Congresspeople asking them to support his agenda, and the same people who were with Obama back when all of the "serious" Democrats were supporting Hillary. Obama's "on-line audience" is made up of the folks who were also his "on-line donors." You know, the ones who put more than a half a billion dollars in his campaign warchest. The ones who volunteered their time to knock on doors and make phone calls, and in some cases lead the local cells. Those are the people Obama knocked when he gave that flippant answer. On Election Night, we were told that the victory "truly belonged" to us. Now, we're just a bunch of stoned freaks, to be mocked in front of the "serious" Democrats, the ones who weren't giving Obama the time of day before we stepped in.
And that's the worst part of this whole episode. Because the actual audience at that town hall was made up of "serious" Democrats. You could tell when they laughed at the question, and applauded his simplistic answer. "Marijuana legalization? Hahaha! If you were a 'serious' Democrat like us, you'd know to mock and deride such an idea, lest we all be drummed out of office in the next election!" These were Hillary's supporters. The people who told us Obama wasn't ready, and that if we didn't nominate a centrist we'd be crushed in Ohio and Pennsylvania and we might as well give John McCain the White House keys as nominate the black guy. They were wrong then, and they are still wrong. There are simply countless reasons why scorning us to gain their favor is bad politics.
Ok, so what should Barack Obama have said? Well, first of all, he should have read the question, in its entirety, and not made the author sound like some kind of retard. Secondly, his answer should have begun with "This is a very good question." Since, you know, this guy is obviously a supporter and the question was voted to the top by a lot of other supporters, not to mention the fact that it was, in fact, a very good question, whether the simpletons in the live audience understood that or not. He could have gone on by saying something like "It's clear that our drug policy in this country needs adjustment, as Secretary Clinton said recently" (by throwing Hill's name in there, he could have kept the "serious" Democrats happy). "But I don't see that legalization of marijuana is the solution." Perfect answer. It respects the question, and more importantly, the author of the question and everyone who voted for the question, it keeps the "serious" Democrats happy, and it doesn't give the Republicans anything to bash him over the head with in 2012. It would be even better if he were to throw in something like, "I don't believe that drug use should be considered a crime, because addicts would be much more open to receiving treatment if they weren't worried about legal ramifications, but that is a issue that has to be dealt with at the state level", but that wouldn't be necessary, if he had just made some sort of attempt to not completely sell his powerbase up the river for a few political points with a roomfull of cowards.
I mean, after all, it's not like we want to legalize COCAINE or anything. I mean, that shit is for crazy people. Right, Mr. President?