Top 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidates' Views on Legal Marijuana

2020 is a long time to wait, but that’s probably the earliest point before the legal marijuana

industry could see any positive changes at the federal level. As my readers know, I firmly believe that third parties need more inclusion in the political process for this to happen. However, that is unlikely to occur anytime soon. Therefore, let’s examine the top potential Democratic Presidential hopefuls for 2020 and see their stances.

Honorable Mention

Senator Bernie Sanders (VT-I)  

(Flickr - Gage Skidmore)

It seems unlikely that Sanders will get the Democratic nomination in 2020 even though he has the best shot at winning; he’s literally the most popular current politician in America. Sanders would have likely beaten Trump if he had received the nomination because he would have maintained the liberal base while receiving better voter turnout with the key demographics where Clinton was unpopular. 

It’s no secret that the DNC worked behind the scenes to block Sanders from winning the nomination. In fact, my last column with The American Conservative detailed the current lawsuit filed by some of his supporters against the DNC. Long story short, the DNC hasn’t openly denied many of the accusations that their group tried to suppress his campaign. Hence, there’s no reason to believe that the DNC will show any support for him in the next election.

Most Likely Candidates

It looks like something akin to the Watergate scandal is in the works. Jimmy Carter was an obscure Governor from Georgia when that took place. (He also publicly supported decriminalization of possession of up to one ounce of marijuana, which was a bold political stance in the 1970s.) However, it seems unlikely that a Governor will receive the nomination because the news cycle is entirely focused on Trump. 

There will probably be lengthy Congressional hearings and Democrats in related committees will get the face time that corresponds to votes. With that in mind, please note that James Garfield was the first and only sitting member of the House of Representatives to be elected President. Therefore, we’ll look at the most likely candidates currently serving in the U.S. Senate.

1 - Sen. Kamala Harris (CA)   

(Wikimedia Commons)

This fast-rising politician has rapidly gained a ton of political momentum. She was elected last year to her first term in the U.S. Senate and she already serves on some influential Senate Committees, including Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs and the Intelligence Committee. Harris served as the Attorney General of California before heading to Capitol Hill and, like most prosecutors, she predictably sided with the special interests of the prison industrial complex. She waged a famous crusade against BackPage.com and has remained a strong supporter of civil asset forfeiture. 

While serving as Attorney General in 2014, she literally laughed at the suggestion of legalizing recreational marijuana. However, Harris somewhat reversed course, but she isn’t in favor of legalization. Instead, she is now advocating for decriminalization, but her exact plan isn’t clear. In April of last year, she suggested that marijuana should only be changed from a Schedule I to Schedule II drug. Furthermore, as Tom Angell (Chairman of the Marijuana Majority) accurately points out, Kamala Harris continues referring to the drug war in the past tense as if it is a thing of the past.

2 - Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA)  

(Wikimedia Commons)

Elizabeth Warren has strong name recognition and has developed a reputation as a tough banking regulator. As far as her views on marijuana, she has seemingly shifted to tepid support of legalization. Two years ago, when questioned about her state’s ballot initiative for recreational marijuana she told MassLive:

“I’m open to it. I think we’ve learned more. A couple of states have legalized marijuana for recreational use.”

That was a reversal from the past. She had been openly against legalization and even attacked a rival Republican as late as 2013 for supporting legal recreational marijuana. However, she’s now acting as an ally to the legal marijuana industry. She has publicly challenged Jeff Sessions to respect states’ rights and is working to create legal banking options for the industry.  

3 - Sen. Cory Booker (NJ)    

(Wikimedia Commons)

Booker has a high level of name recognition, particularly with young voters. He served as the Mayor of Newark before heading to the U.S. Senate in 2013. He’s quickly made a name for himself by being a very accessible media figure.

Of these three potential candidates, Booker has been by far the most courageous advocate of legal recreational marijuana. In fact, he sponsored the “Marijuana Justice Act,” SB 1689, which is hands down the most comprehensive and progressive marijuana legalization bill in U.S. history.

Here are a few highlights:

• Every person presently incarcerated for a marijuana offense would be eligible to have that sentence reversed.

• It would remove marijuana entirely from the controlled substance list.

• It would provide federal funds for states to change drug policies if they have incarcerated minorities and low-income individuals disproportionally.

• It would provide a “Community Reinvestment Fund” with job programs and several other benefits in cities that have been particularly affected by the drug war.

Suffice it say, this is an incredibly ambitious bill and it has absolutely no shot of being passed at this time. Nonetheless, it’s a positive development that proposals like this are beginning to be introduced to the electorate at large.

Third Parties Key to Accountability for Trump & Future Presidents

As you probably know, President Trump announced via Twitter that he planned to reinstate the ban on transgender people from joining the military. It’s hard to believe that this decision was anything other than an attempt to rally his base and distract from the Mueller investigation. After all, he pointed to the healthcare costs from transgender soldiers, but that figure is only a fraction of the security expenses from his trips to Mar-A-Lago.

There’s one thing that we do know--Trump knows how to manipulate the media cycle. For one day, the attention was no longer on his financial ties to Russian mobsters, or the meeting between Russian with his son, son-in-law, and campaign manager. Trump certainly seems to be in panic mode as he’s already questioned his attorneys about pardoning himself and his family.

This week, his distractionary targets have been Jeff Sessions and the transgender community. Who knows who will be in his crosshairs next week or even tomorrow?

The silver lining in this circus show of a presidency is that the American public is being exposed to the power of the executive office. For instance, maybe we can now begin discussing checks and balances, such as limitations on launching nuclear attacks? Or how about we address the Obama administration’s authorization of drone attacks against American citizens, charging whistleblowers with the Espionage Act, spying on American citizens through our intelligence agencies, etc.?

Unfortunately, these lessons seem to be lost the American public. Politics tend to be reactionary, rather than proactive. Likewise, we tend to focus on individuals, rather than reforming systems and establishing proper precedents.

One of the main problems is that our political system methodically blocks independent, outside voices. That’s why you didn’t hear many important issues raised during the presidential debates. And that leads to the issues raised in my last article with The American Conservative, “Democratic Party Fraud: Like Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders never had a fair shot.”

In short, that article pointed to a few lawsuits that could actually open the political process. The first involves a class-action lawsuit against the Democratic National Party, Carol Wilding et al. v. DNC Services Corp. The plaintiffs are making the case that the DNC violated its fiduciary duty by committing fraud and colluding against Bernie Sanders. In turn, the DNC hasn’t denied these claims. Instead, their defense is that they have a right to operate their organization in this shady manner.

I wish the plaintiffs luck, but it’s unlikely that the government can properly regulate political parties ensuring the integrity of the nomination process. Then again, candidates such as Bernie Sanders or Ron Paul have only run within the two main party because our system unofficially blocks third parties. That leads to the other important pending lawsuits, Level the Playing Field v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) and Johnson v. Commission on Presidential Debates.

To brief, the lawsuits contest that the 15% polling standard by the Commission on Presidential Debates is akin to an antitrust violation. Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, The Libertarian Party, and the Green Party are leading these lawsuits. And that’s where most people fail to see the point. They focus on Johnson’s and Stein’s chances at winning the election. Instead, we need to focus on the concept of third-party candidates’ ideas winning and gaining influence.   

The average person underestimates the potential impact of third-party candidates in the debates. Take Ross Perot for example. He pulled off the impossible by making the national debt the dominant topic of interest. As a result, the Clinton administration and the Republican Congress made balancing the budget a top priority. In his first year, Clinton’s $16 billion stimulus package was rejected by Congress and the deficit was reduced to $354 billion (down from $413 billion in the prior year). This budget-conscious political landscape eventually resulted in a $290 billion surplus in Bill Clinton’s last year in office.

Obviously, there are many factors for why the Congressional budget has gone off the rails. However, one reason that is rarely mentioned in the media is that it’s been 25 years since a budget-focused third-party candidate has been on the presidential debate stage! Last year our federal budget deficit was $552 billion, and our total national debt is now approaching $20 trillion dollars!

Last year, our country had a real opportunity for political progress if Gary Johnson and Jill Stein had been allowed to debate. That would have forced Trump and Clinton to debate policies in detail that were outside of their comfort zones. Here are few in which the current administration has already made or attempted to make drastic changes:

Legal Marijuana

Mandatory Minimum Sentences

Civil Asset Forfeiture

Private Prisons

Equal Rights for the LGBTQ community

Needless to say, the current President is quite thin-skinned and doesn’t respond well to criticism. With that in mind, our country would be in a better position if he had been pressured to make a concrete position on those and other important issues before taking office.

“It’s all by design, man.”

It’s an open secret that the Commission on Presidential Debates firmly protects the two-party system, blocks independent candidates, and is controlled by the political establishment. It’s a private company that is sponsored by a few powerful corporations. Click here for a list of the past donors.

The organization’s leadership is a smorgasbord of Republican and Democrat loyalists. That includes the former Chairmen of the DNC and the RNC, Frank Fahrenkopf and Paul G. Kirk. What is not as well-known is the extent to which the Commission on Presidential Debates capitulates to the demands of the two major parties.

Contrary to popular belief, Ross Perot was not selected by the Commission on Presidential Debates in 1992 purely on the merits of his polling numbers. This is obscure knowledge, but the two major parties formed secret contractual agreements each election cycle to decide the rules of the debates, including the height of the podium.

George Farah, the founder of the nonprofit group, Open Debates, received leaked documents from those agreements. He found out that both parties had veto power over third-party candidates. Surprisingly, the Republicans didn’t use that power in 1992 to block Perot because they thought he would take away more votes from Clinton.

Four years later, Bill Clinton and Bob Dole successfully blocked Perot from debating even though he grabbed 19 percent of the popular vote in the prior election. The Commission received a lot of criticism for that decision. In turn, their organization instituted the 15% polling number in 2000 to increase “transparency,” but it’s clear that such a high threshold is meant to obstruct any challenges to the political establishment.

To wrap up, both the DNC Fraud case and the lawsuits against the Commission on Presidential Debates could establish some incredibly important precedents for our democracy. Again, I wish the plaintiffs luck in the DNC Fraud case, but neither major party will likely respond adequate to government regulations, despite public pressure. Nonetheless, that case needs as much publicity as possible in order to shine light on the DNC’s corrupt practices.

On the other hand, public pressure due to increased awareness could have an impact on the corrupt practices of the Commission on Presidential Debates. Our country needs to hear new, outside voices; few positive changes are going to be offered by the Democratic or Republican parties.

Gary Johnson has aggressively marketed through social media to let the public know about these lawsuits. You don’t have to support Gary Johnson or agree with any of his political views. However, we’d all benefit by supporting his right and other future third-party candidates’ right to debate.