Rand Paul v. Hillary Clinton: Will Pot Give Him the Electoral Edge?

Interesting supposition from a good Rolling Stone article from Tim Dickinson surveying all the victorious fronts of the recent past and likely future in the rolling back of our evil war on drugs:

Among likely 2016 contenders, of either party, the Kentucky senator [Rand Paul] is the most progressive on marijuana. He's sponsored legislation to make medical marijuana fully legal in states that have adopted it. In the last election, Paul championed the right of D.C. voters to decide on legalization for themselves. Paul has also been a vocal advocate for decriminalization, decrying the practice of booking kids for cannabis. "I don't want to encourage people to do it," he has said. "I think even marijuana is a bad thing to do. But I also don't want to put people in jail who make a mistake."

If Paul were to face off in a contest with Hillary Clinton, pot could emerge as an unlikely wedge issue for the Republican – particularly in libertarian-leaning swing states like Arizona and Nevada, where legalization initiatives are expected. That's because Clinton has continued to talk like a 1990s drug warrior, recently fretting over the dangers of marijuana edibles to children in Colorado, and even declaring that "the feds should be attuned to the way that marijuana is still used as a gateway drug."

The political logic here is not mysterious. White male independents – those most open to a Paul candidacy – are firmly in the legalization camp. (In Oregon, this slice of the electorate voted 65 percent to tax and regulate.)…

Hillary Clinton is a malleable foe and there's a strong chance that at the slightest sign of this issue becoming a problem for her, she'll become a born again drug war dove (despite right now female support for legalization being only 46 percent), simply because being anything else will rapidly become untenable for ambitious politicians. And for that thank all the people working for decades to shift the public perspective on the Drug War's wrongness and futility way ahead of the political perspective shifting.