Obama's Secret Weapon: Voters Too Stupid to Realize His Drug Policies Suck

Writing at The Atlantic Wire, Elspeth Reeve suggests that marijuana reform measures on several state ballots this fall could help Barack Obama win re-election by drawing young voters to the polls. If that happens, the headline says, "legalizing weed" could be "Obama's secret weapon." Well, not so secret anymore, now that people are writing about it. In any case, Reeve warns, "past attempts to bong the vote have been disappointing, in part because stoners aren't the group anyone would most count on to bother filling out a ballot." Ha ha! It's funny because it's true: Voters who think it's absurd that the government continues to arrest 750,000 or so people every year for possessing a plant can never get it together, because they are constantly high. Likewise, it's amazing that drinkers in Washington state managed to pass a ballot intitiative privatizing liquor sales last fall, because everyone knows those people are so wasted all the time they don't even know when it's Election Day.

In fact, pot smokers are so stupid that even if they manage to put down their bongs, get up off their couches, turn off their Xboxes, dust off the Dorito dust, and meander to the polls, they won't realize that Barack Obama, despite his own extensive history of drug use and his promises of a more enlightened and compassionate approach, has been no better than George W. Bush on drug policy and in some respects worse. They probably don't even know that Obama cracked down on medical marijuana instead of letting states go their own way (as he said he would when he ran for president), that so far he has commuted only one drug offender's sentence (despite his pre-presidential criticism of excessively harsh penalties), or that he literally laughs at the very notion of legalizing marijuana (despite his past support for decriminalization)—in much the same way that Reeve laughs at people who are misguided enough to let the ongoing outrage that is the war on drugs guide their votes. If such people exist, they sure as hell should not vote for Barack Obama.