Yes, everyone’s caught up in the question of who will win the presidential election next week. Yes, everyone wants to know whether the Democrats will seize control of the US Senate. But those are “horse race” questions, and none of the likely outcomes are, in themselves, likely to result in long-term change from business as usual. The campaigns are full of sound and fury, but they signify not much more than mild policy tweaks.

If you’re looking for significant and lasting change, look further down your ballot. Especially if you live in Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, South Dakota, or Mississippi. Voters in those first four states will decide whether to legalize recreational use of marijuana; in the fifth, whether to allow medicinal use.

Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris has pledged that a Joe Biden administration would work to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level.

Given the Biden/Harris record as drug warriors and mass incarcerators, I’m not sure I find that promise believable, but the tide is definitely turning on cannabis. In fact, I’m surprised the first Trump administration never made a move on the issue. But these ballot issues could make the difference nationwide, not just just in those five states.

Marijuana wasn’t criminalized because it’s harmful. Marijuana was criminalized so that federal agents like Harry Anslinger wouldn’t lose their jobs when alcohol prohibition ended, and so that William Randolph Hearst’s wood-pulp paper mills wouldn’t have to compete with cheaper hemp paper.

Marijuana hasn’t remained illegal at the federal level because it’s harmful. It’s remained illegal at the federal level because keeping it illegal directs billions of dollars into government bureaucracies with thousands of employees. Those bureaucracies and those employees  constitute a special interest lobby — historically a very effective one — within the government itself.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt once admonished a group of petitioners: “OK, you’ve convinced me. Now go out and bring pressure on me.”

So far, 33 states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana, and 11 states and DC have legalized recreational use, in direct nullification of federal law. That’s pressure.

Four more states in the latter category and one more in the medical category, with more than 2/3 of Americans supporting full legalization,  would be even more pressure.

Maybe even enough pressure to finally counter the self-interested lobbying of the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Office of National Drug Control Policy, as well as “non-profit” hangers-on whose (often taxpayer-funded) budgets depend on scaring us all with tall tales about marijuana.

Sooner or later, Congress and the White House will cave and end the war on marijuana. Voters in Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, South Dakota, and Mississippi can make it sooner rather than later. And hopefully they will.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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As of late October, the political modelers at FiveThirtyEight gave Democrats a 72% chance of pulling off the trifecta — winning the White House and majorities in both Houses of Congress — on November 3.

My visceral response to that possibility is negative. Excluding outlier possibilities like a Libertarian landslide, I’ve always considered divided government the best outcome.

Gridlock, in theory, is good. If an opposition party controls either the White House or one house of Congress, that theory goes, it can thwart the other party’s worst ideas through presidential veto or the opposition-controlled house refusing to pass legislation.

But in the 21st century, that theory hasn’t proven out very well. Instead of one party resisting the other party’s worst ideas, it tends to trade its acquiescence to those ideas for getting some of its own worst ideas implemented as well.

Additionally, the runaway growth of presidential power means presidents usually get away with just ignoring Congress when it won’t give them whatever they demand.

Except for a few months around election dates, when gridlock re-emerges as a stalling tactic, divided government delivers the worst of both worlds.

There’s one good thing to be said for single-party government: The ruling party owns the outcomes of its policies.

George W. Bush and the Republicans owned the first six years of the “War on Terror.” They controlled the White House. They controlled the US House of Representatives. They controlled the US Senate.

Barack Obama and the Democrats owned the Affordable Care Act. It was passed by a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate and signed by a Democratic president.

Donald Trump and the Republicans owned everything between January 20, 2017 (when Trump was inaugurated) and January 3, 2019 (when a Democrat-controlled House opened session).

With divided government, both sides have plausible excuses for failing to make our lives better. The ruling party blames opposition obstructionism. The opposition party blames the ruling party’s unwillingness to compromise.

Both excuses are true,  but both excuses also spread a concealing fog over the truth that neither party offers real solutions, and the fact that neither party cares about anything but preserving and expanding its own power.

When one party controls government, it has no one else to blame when its policies fail. What you see is what you get, and what you get is one party having everything its way. That clarity may be the only consolation prize we get out of this election.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

When the New York Post began rolling out a series of stories on Hunter Biden’s supposed laptop and its supposed contents, I immediately thought of Stormy Daniels and the “hush money” incident.

“Everyone who cared about Donald Trump’s marital infidelities and sexual peccadilloes,” I wrote at the time, “already had enough — more than enough — information on the subject to reach the same conclusion that they would have reached from this particular incident. And it was therefore clear that nobody who still intended to vote for him as of late October 2016 DID care.”

Everyone — at least everyone who might care one way or another — knew by then that Donald Trump was a lying philanderer with a creepy, proprietary attitude toward women. The existence of one more extra-marital affair, one more non-disclosure agreement, one more cover-up, didn’t change any minds.

Ditto the Post‘s “blockbuster revelations” about Hunter Biden, Burisma, and Joe Biden.

Everyone who might care one way or another knew years ago that Biden the younger got a sweetheart job with Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, because Biden the elder was vice-president of the United States. That was obvious — Hunter Biden had no particular qualifications for the job. His relationship with Joe Biden was the only plausible reason.

Everyone who might care one way or another also knew years ago the Joe Biden used his position as vice-president to intervene in Ukraine’s internal affairs, pressuring Kiev to fire a prosecutor  who had investigated Burisma, because Biden bragged about doing so on camera.

Everyone who might care one way or another about Hunter Biden’s influence-peddling or Joe Biden’s tolerance of (at least) or participation in (possibly) that influence-peddling knew about it long before early voting in the 2020 election began.

I could count the number of truly undecided voters left out there on the fingers of one thumb. Anyone who claims to be “undecided” at this late date is leaning hard toward the challenger, not the incumbent. Donald Trump has had four years to favorably impress them. If he hasn’t done so yet, he’s not going to do so in the next two weeks.

That’s why the whole thing is an October Fizzle rather than the October Surprise Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani had hoped it would be. “A difference which makes no difference,” wrote William James, “is no difference at all.” Supposed new evidence, supposedly proving what everyone who cared one way or the other already knew, is no difference at all.

If there’s a real news angle to this whole affair, that angle is in attempts by Facebook and Twitter to keep the Post‘s non-news from “going viral.” The Streisand Effect quickly foiled those efforts. Everyone who might care one way or another about the story quickly learned about it. And learned (if they didn’t already know) not to trust Facebook or Twitter.

If you haven’t voted yet, choose wisely between Libertarian Jo Jorgensen on one hand, or one of two creepy, handsy, senile, corrupt septuagenarians on the other.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY