What Does it Mean to be a Conservative Democrat?

[RainDog]

39. oh yeah...

a couple of things I wanted to mention in your post. fwiw - I don't think Obama has ever been pro drug war, per se.

I think he is in office and the bureaucracies that deal with this issue have long fossilized their positions, to the point that they cannot respond to scientific evidence in a rational manner and work to obstruct any progress toward ending the absurd "war on drugs." It has not been an issue that Democrats could address at the national level because the entire edifice created by prior administrations makes it one of those issues that would not get attention until, as we both noted, states made changes that are more liberal than federal law.

Prior to becoming the poster boy for the angry American, Reagan did not care about the war on drugs so much - his position was more libertarian, like a lot of western Republicans. But his administration is the one that really amped up the persecution of people who chose to use marijuana.

The reason was because Carter was in support of decriminalization.

Bush Sr. moved to cancel the federal medical marijuana program because, like Reagan, he despised the "liberal homosexuals" who were dealing with the AIDS crisis, and so, he was afraid that all the people dealing with AIDS were going to request that they be included in the federal medical marijuana program. Bush Sr. was in his Willie Horton tough guy phase. He wanted to get tough on drugs and crime (which meant, probably, he wanted to use the DEA to funnel money to military contractors for dirty ops in Latin America... I keeed. sort of.)

Anyway, the origin of the state medical marijuana movement arose directly out of Reagan and Bush's stances. When CA passed the first mmj laws, tho, Clinton worked with the DEA to toughen restrictions and to go after mmj providers...even tho the Federal govt. has no authority to override state law.

By the time Bush Jr. came long, the horse was out of the barn, so to speak, with mmj, tho they did a few photo-op raids and arrests. But mostly they seemed to be too busy trying to justify all the laws they were breaking to worry too much about cancer patients getting some pain relief.

So, considering that history - I think Obama has done a good job of moving away from much of the history of the drug war in this nation - along with sentencing reform. At the same time, I see our jobs, as citizens, is to advocate for the legislative branch to deal with the current federal/state discrepancy. If they don't, I hope Obama will have Holder take action before he leaves office. Who knows if he will or not, however.

BUT - that whole story makes me think of govs. denying medicare expansion in some states - and how states' rights are hurting people in the here and now. Combined with a federal legislative conservative bent - sometimes I wonder if people are not going to "sort themselves" even more by moving to states whose political views more closely match theirs. That's something I have been thinking about a lot lately.