Possibly not, but we have to at least recognize the importance of one of the chambers of Congress voting to legalize for the first time in 50 years.

The Georgia elections on January 5th decide whether this will remain the case.

That doesn't mean anything when we have "democrats" like Joe Manchin. Democrats seem like they are only good at raising money and scaring us about the evil Republicans, but when they are empowered by voters they do nothing.

Obamacare was passed with 60 votes, no republicans supported it, and that was the best we could do. Republicans have never had that kind of margin in the Senate and look what they are able to accomplish.

At some point you just have to call democrats out for what they are, controlled opposition.

I can imagine some GOP senators voting for this bill but I feel I have to get pretty imaginative to imagine it passing.

They'll never get a chance to vote on it, because the GOP leader McConnell has final say on what bills come to a vote.

The Senate is a deeply broken political institution. Every single Republican, by supporting Mitch McConnell as majority leader, is complicit in its destruction.

Two from Alaska, for example.

At the very least it is a statement. I think it will be interesting to see how individual senators vote.

Unfortunately that’s not how it works. If republicans remain in control of the senate (Georgia runoff races in January will decide) then they control what they vote on and what they don’t. So there wouldn’t even be a vote.

I think it is very unlikely we will get to see how the individual senators vote with McConnell at the helm.

It likely won’t come to a vote. Then no one has to make a hard opinion.

The timing here is awfully Political.

I imagine Democrats wouldn't do this if they had control of the government.

Seems like lip service to their bases.

> I imagine Democrats wouldn't do this if they had control of the government.

Why not? It's already decriminalized in virtually the entire country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis_by_U.S._j...

35 states have legalized it for medical use, and 15 have legalized it recreationally. From the map, it looks like Idaho stands alone on it being completely illegal and criminalized.

There is a really good point Democrats were almost universally against gay marriage until it cross the public support threshold. Looks at the stark difference between Obama on gay marriage in his first vs second term. If the polling shows enough people support it Democrats will pretty quickly flip to the support side of the issue if it goes anything like marriage.

Legalizing marijuana (67-32) is slightly more popular than gay marriage (61-31), and the crossover was at roughly the same time as gay marriage.

https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-ga...

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/11/14/americans-s...

To a certain extent, that's how representative government is intended to work.

For sure this should be considered a feature not a bug.

Big policy changes spends your political capital.

You are going to be getting angry phone calls. Better to get those angry phone calls in exchange for a spending bill that goes to your donors/constituents.

Elections have razor thin margins. What benefit does the politician get?

> Big policy changes spends your political capital.

That's the point, though. It's not a big policy change - the map demonstrates that. Decriminalization is already the de facto situation in nearly the entire country.

Federal law with regards to marijuana is completely and openly ignored in much of the country. Dispensaries operate with relative impunity.

Eh, it's a broadly popular policy with huge moderate appeal: https://news.gallup.com/poll/323582/support-legal-marijuana-...

Centrist Democrats have been trying to get this moderate base for a while, and leftist Democrats are obviously gonna support legalization, so this seems like the rare case where they actually get to be aligned on something broadly and would push it if they were in power.

It would be a shame if politicians got some Politics in our politics. /s

> Seems like lip service to their bases.

Awesome! What's the problem?

In theory, this would be the kind of ideological thing Rand Paul would get behind. But I doubt he will, because he lacks his father's integrity: he only votes along Libertarian lines when it's inconsequential.