Why did Hillary Clinton come out against abolishing the death penaliy?

October 29, 2015 Nick Cassella

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Yesterday, Hillary Clinton irritated progressives again, this time with regard to capital punishment (aka the government legally killing criminals). When asked about this topic, Clinton firmly stated, “I do not favor abolishing [capital punishment]…because I do think there are certain egregious cases that still deserve the consideration of the death penalty, but I’d like to see those be very limited and rare, as opposed to what we’ve seen in most states.”

Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley took this opportunity to attack Clinton’s centrist answer by highlighting their support of abolishing capital punishment. O’Malley, in particular, had some strong words for Hillary Clinton:

Secretary Clinton is often a bit behind the times in terms of actually what works when it comes to policy. I respect her. I have a great deal of respect for her, but she’s often late to many of these issues because she’s of a different generation than I am.

While I agree with Governor O’Malley’s points and overall tactic, he must also know that 61 percent of Americans favor the death penalty for a person convicted of murder. Only 37 percent are opposed. It’s easy to see why Hillary, ever the pragmatic progressive, has come out in favor of capital punishment for “certain egregious cases.” She’s doing so because she doesn’t want this type of a moment presented to her:

Clinton’s conciliatory language on capital punishment is similar to how she has responded to calls for marijuana legalization (“There should be availability [of medical marijuana] under appropriate circumstances. But I do think we need more research…”). Her answers are thoughtful, yet pandering; progressive, yet centrist.

Simply put, Clinton is trying to win the presidency, not just the Democratic nomination. To do so, she must hold centrist positions on certain issues. That’s politics.

While Sanders and O’Malley are on the right side of history when it comes to capital punishment, the American people still lag behind them. Let’s face it: our nation has an insatiable appetite for murderous retribution. However, directing our frustration towards Hillary Clinton solves nothing on this matter. She isn’t holding America back from becoming a more forgiving and morally righteous country – we, the people, are.

If You’re Sick of Big Money in Politics, You Should Vote “Yes” on I-122

October 26, 2015 Paul Constant

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Policy

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Go make democracy great again, Seattle.

Here at Civic Ventures, we believe in creating civic change on a local level. At a time when Congress is locked up in partisan stasis, we look to our cities to be laboratories of democracy, the places where we experiment with new policies that carry government into the 21st century. This is not always ideal; city government doesn’t always possess the far-reaching authority that the federal government enjoys. But those limitations shouldn’t discourage us. Gay marriage started in the city of San Francisco, grew to a state issue in Massachusetts, and eventually became a federal issue. Cities tend to start these conversations, which then become national issues. And no city in America has been more innovative over the last few years than Seattle. We’ve been at the forefront of the $15 minimum wage fight and we’re engaging in civic conversations that will likely change the way future generations of Americans talk about gun responsibility, criminal justice reform, and marijuana legalization.

The United States desperately needs campaign finance reform. The system was already in decline when the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision established personhood for corporations and gave money the same protected status we give to free speech. But since then, corporate influence on elections has reached staggering heights. It now takes hundreds of millions of dollars to elect a president in America. The rules that stop candidates from conferring with political action committees are getting blurrier all the time. Politics has become super-saturated with money. That money results in real-world consequences: wealthy people and corporations enjoy greater access to political power than at any moment in modern American history. And Americans understand this; a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll recently found that one third of all Americans are concerned about the influence of money on politics, “more than for any of five other issues tested.” When you weed out Republicans, those numbers go through the roof: “roughly half of self-described liberals and Democratic primary voters ranking it as their primary anxiety as the 2016 White House race gears up.”

This is why I voted for initiative 122, the Honest Elections initiative. Among other things, I-122 limits campaign contributions from big corporate interests, makes it illegal for city officials to take high-paying lobbying jobs right after leaving office, sets modest contribution limits for candidates who receive public financing, increases transparency, increases fines on people who break the rules, and allows people to support the candidates of their choice with $25 “Democracy Vouchers.” This would be the first voucher-based campaign finance reform system in the entire country. The Huffington Post’s Paul Blumenthal ran a nice profile of the initiative earlier this month.

Locally, this initiative is a good first step toward campaign finance reform. Other state and cities around the country are working on their own solutions. Arizona, for example, is enjoying the benefits of its own clean election laws:

To qualify for a public campaign grant under Arizona’s Citizens Clean Elections system, [Juan] Mendez had to prove that he had sufficient public support by reaching a threshold of at least 250 $5 donations from citizens in his district. That meant a lot of initial time spent pounding the pavement and knocking on doors—and not incidentally, it meant energizing democracy. “It’s really hard to start the campaign,” he says. “A lot harder than going to a developer, PAC, or union and telling them what they want to hear.”

Mendez qualified for the public grant and ended up running in the Democratic primary. While this was traditionally a progressive district, Mendez says he wouldn’t have even considered running without the option of public funding. He became the youngest legislator in the state, was re-elected in 2014, and was recently named co-chair of the Arizona Legislative Latino Caucus. He’s been at the forefront of the state’s progressive agenda, calling for immigration reform, the expansion of voter rights, paid sick leave, and a “yes means yes” law to combat sexual assault.

Campaign finance reform is on the ballot in Maine this fall, and Connecticut and Arizona’s legislatures are considering upgrades to their own campaign finance reform laws. Obviously, none of those proposed laws are perfect. But they are certainly better than the alternative, which is what we have now: an alienating, demoralizing system in which average Americans feel voiceless in their own democracy. From its inception, America has always been engaged in the pursuit of the “more perfect,” and that’s what proposed changes like I-122 are about: trying to locally reverse the catastrophic damage done to democracy by the Supreme Court with the Citizens United decision.

This is a battle we have fought again and again in America. When more groups enjoy the right to vote—women, African-Americans—our democracy becomes stronger. When our democracy looks more like our nation, government becomes faster and more responsive and smarter. Now, average Americans are losing their voice to big money. If we allow that to happen, government will become less responsive and more tailored to corporate interests. If this happens, our economy will flag because the true job creators—the middle class—will be penalized by laws that favor big money. Our future is at stake.

Why should you support I-122? Because it will help underserved voices find a platform in Seattle politics. Because our government and our city are stronger when more people are included. Because it will make clear which candidates are working for the people, and which candidates are working for special interests. Because progressive America has learned to look to Seattle for what to do next, and we need to lead on this issue. Because we are the most vibrant laboratory in American democracy, and we can’t afford to do nothing.

Did You Know That Washington State Made Great Strides in Low-Income Education This Year?

October 22, 2015 Paul Constant

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Policy

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So much noise has been made about the Washington State Legislature’s bumbling of K-12 education this year. This is for good reason, obviously: our state constitution demands that we consider education to be our first and highest priority, and our lawmakers in Olympia have failed that charge again and again.

But here’s something you likely haven’t heard: the state legislature celebrated two enormous educational successes this year. First, a bipartisan group of legislators came together and passed the Early Start Act, which helps ensure that every child in Washington has access to high-quality early learning. And second, the legislature fully funded the state’s College Bound Scholarship program, which provides financial aid for low-income students. Together, these two programs help low-income kids earn the same opportunity to live productive lives as any other child born in Washington state.

Frank Ordway is the Director of Government Relations—“that’s just a dressed-up term for political strategist,” he demurs—for the League of Education Voters, an organization devoted to giving “all students an equal opportunity for success from cradle to career.” We met at the League’s headquarters on Lake Union to talk about Early Start and College Bound, which Ordway characterizes as “a pair of bookends that are really quite transformative.”

Early Start “ensures that by 2021, every low income child in Washington state will have access to all-day high-quality early learning,” Ordway explains. (By low-income, the law means children living up to 110% of the federally established poverty line (PDF), which right now totals roughly 30,000 kids in Washington—a number that could climb to 40 or 45,000 by the time the law is implemented.) He says this makes us the first state in the union to accomplish such a far-reaching goal. Ordway admits that the legislation is “complicated” to describe, but it’s packed with thoughtful flourishes that ensure these early learning programs will not be a race to the bottom.

For one thing, Ordway says, “We’re paying providers more. We’re not paying them like babysitters. We cannot have a workforce that’s paid less than a parking attendant” taking care of our children. For another thing, the law enforces regular assessments to ensure that the education providers “reflect the communities in which these families live.” In other words, Ordway says, the goal is not to encourage a fleet of upper middle class white providers to be airlifted into, say, Somali immigrant communities, it’s to “see a richer reflection of our communities and a cultural responsiveness.”

Many people and organizations helped push this through Olympia, but Ross Hunter deserves a lion’s share of the credit.

Early Start also streamlines the process for eligible parents, increasing ease of use between government agencies and providing continuity of care. Once you’re eligible for Early Start, Ordway says, “You don’t have to keep applying,” even if your income goes up or down during the year you’ve been approved for Early Start. “Short of winning the lottery, we’re not going to take away the care for those children,” he says. Early education laws were weighted down by burdensome regulations to prevent fraud, but Ordway says the idea of “low income women stealing daycare” is ridiculous on its face and it prevents the children from the developmental assistance that they really need. “Even if the parents are screwing up, we shouldn’t be keeping those kids out of daycare.”

“Lots of legislators deserve credit,” for this accomplishment, Ordway says, but he cites Ross Hunter by name for wrangling bipartisan support and understanding the issue from top to bottom. “There were a lot of Republicans who voted for this bill.”

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Postal Banking Is an Idea Whose Time Has Come (Again)

October 21, 2015 Paul Constant

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2016, Policy

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I freely admit it: I’m a big fan of the US Postal Service.

If you hear about the US Postal Service at all these days, it’s likely because of a failure. The Post Office continually posts significant operating losses, which are generally accompanied by news stories about the slow demise of the USPS. These stories rarely give you the full story, which is the fact that the USPS only posts losses because the Republican Congress of 2006 strapped the service with an impossible financial burden—a bizarre mandate demanding that the USPS pre-fund retiree health benefits for 75 years in the future. This is a burden that no other government agency (or, for that matter, private company) has ever had to carry, and it amounts to over five billion dollars a year in annual payments, an operating cost that no organization could bear. Also, it’s important to note that the USPS has not taken a penny of your tax dollars since 1982, and the service they provide is unparalleled: no private corporation could offer the network and consistency that the USPS offers.

Joe Pinkser at The Atlantic highlights one of Bernie Sanders’s best ideas—a way for the USPS to become even more useful while also helping the poorest Americans save a little money. Here’s what Sanders has to say about it:

If you are a low-income person, it is, depending upon where you live, very difficult to find normal banking. Banks don’t want you. And what people are forced to do is go to payday lenders who charge outrageously high interest rates. You go to check-cashing places, which rip you off. And, yes, I think that the postal service, in fact, can play an important role in providing modest types of banking service to folks who need it.

As Pinkser points out, this is not a crazy idea. Plenty of European countries provide banking by post—in fact, a vast majority of post offices around the world provide some sort of banking services—and too many Americans rely on predatory checks-cashed outlets to do their banking. Mehrsa Baradaran at Slate last year presented a wonderful case for postal banking: we’ve already done it in America, and it worked.

The bill eventually passed in 1910 and created what was called the United States Postal Savings System.* The interest on accounts was set by statute to a low 2.5 percent to avoid luring customers away from banks. The postmasters and supporting congressmen also called the postal banks “the poor man’s banks” to set bankers at ease. Accounts were capped at $100 deposits allowed per month and a total savings cap of $500—the limit was raised to $2,500 dollars in 1918.

This, quite simply, is a no-brainer. Roughly two out of every ten Americans are “underbanked,” which means they rely on high-fee check-cashing outlets to do their banking. The USPS would allow them to do their banking more affordably, and encourage modest savings accounts that would enable them to better their conditions. This is something many other nations do. Hell, it’s something America used to do. And its time has come again.

A Property Tax Primer (or Why Prop 1 Opponents Don’t Know What They’re Saying When They Say Property Taxes Are Too High)

October 21, 2015 Goldy

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Policy, Uncategorized

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One of the most frustrating things about covering property tax measures like Seattle’s Proposition 1 is that most people don’t understand the way property taxes work.

From a budget writer’s perspective, the property tax is the best tax ever, because if done correctly, it almost always brings in exactly the amount of money projected. That’s because, unlike the stupid, stupid sales tax, budget writers don’t actually set a rate and just cross their fingers hoping that the money comes in; they request a specific dollar value—for example, about $95 million a year over nine years for Proposition 1’s “Let’s Move Seattle” transportation levy—and then the county assessor adjusts the property tax rate annually based on current assessed value (subject to statutory limits) in order to generate the requested revenue. If property values rise from year to year, the rate goes down; if property values fall as they did when the real estate bubble went pop, the rate goes up. But if passed, Prop 1 is almost guaranteed to generate that $95 million a year.

Over the long run, nominal property values will almost certainly rise. So while the voters guide projects a tax rate of $0.62 per $1,000 of assessed value in year one, even a relatively modest 5 percent average annual rise in home values would leave the rate at about $0.39 per $1,000 of assessed value by year nine.

But unfortunately for city budget writers, as reliable as the property tax is, it is subject to two very important limitations. The first is known as the “statutory dollar rate limit”: the City of Seattle’s property tax authority is limited to $3.60 per $1,000 of assessed value. That is the maximum theoretical rate the city can levy without voter approval. But thanks to the second limit, known as I-747’s “101 percent limit” (or more accurately: “Tim Eyman’s Revenge”), the city’s actual regular levy authority falls far short of the statutory dollar rate limit.

Under the growth limit factor first enacted in the 1970s, and then punitively reduced to 101 percent under Eyman’s I-747 (and later reinstated by a cowardly legislature after the state supreme court tossed out the initiative), the dollar value of property taxes collected may not exceed 101 percent of the taxes collected in the highest of the three most recent years, plus an allowance for net increased property value in the district resulting from new construction.

Don’t know about you, but my property taxes aren’t so bad.

I know—that’s very complicated. But suffice it to say that thanks to the 101 percent limit, revenues generated from Seattle’s regular levy generally don’t even keep pace with inflation, let alone rising property values. As a result, the actual maximum regular levy rate available to the city council has been steadily falling as I-747’s 101 percent limit has ratcheted down revenue growth.

Fortunately, state law does allow for “lid lifts,”* enabling the city to raise revenues in excess of the 101 percent limit, but within the $3.60 statutory cap, subject to voter approval. That’s what Prop 1 is—a lid lift—as was the expiring “Bridging the Gap” it replaces. When you add up Seattle’s regular levy together with its various lid lifts, Seattle is currently levying a combined rate of just over $2.62 per $1,000 of assessed value. Add on Prop 1’s proposed $0.62 per $1,000 and our combined rate would still come in below the $3.29 per $1,000 we paid as recently as 2013! And our current combined rate of $9.27—city, county, schools, state, everything—is our lowest combined rate in six years.

Compared to the rest of the nation, that’s pretty damn low, ranking Seattle’s effective rate at 38th out the 51 largest cities in each state and the District of Columbia. (Also, we don’t have an income tax. So I suppose yay for our low taxes, if you’re into that sort of thing.)

And it’s not just our property tax rate that’s held relatively flat. According to data compiled by the Seattle Times, the property tax bill on a median Seattle home climbed from $3,214 in 2005 to $4,022 last year—an increase of $808, or 25.1 percent. But inflation increased almost 22 percent over the same period, resulting in a negligible increase of only about a hundred bucks in real dollars.

How is this possible? How could Seattle’s property tax hold steady in both rate and real dollars even in the face of skyrocketing home values and a seemingly endless parade of voter-approved levies?

Well, one reason this sounds so counterintuitive is that while everybody makes a big deal every time we put a new levy on the ballot, nobody sends you as much as postcard when these levies ultimately expire—and voter-approved lid lifts (typically 6 to 9 years) are expiring all the time! For example, sure, “Let’s Move Seattle” would add an additional $275 a year to the property tax bill of the median Seattle homeowner, but only after “Bridging the Gap’s” $130 a year levy expires. That’s not nothing. But it’s not really a $275 increase.

Second—and this is a concept that many folks find difficult to wrap their minds around—your property tax bill doesn’t necessarily rise or fall with your home value. Rather, your property tax bill mostly rises or falls when your home value rises or falls relative to median value. Again, this is the way property taxes work: we levy a dollar amount, not a set rate. Prop 1 is asking for $95 million a year. If Seattle home prices rise 10 percent, Prop 1 still only raises $95 million—we’ll all still collectively pay the same amount, just at a lower rate. However, if your home’s value rises faster than median, while my home’s value rises slower, your share of that $95 million will go up while mine goes down.

Again, I know, it’s all very complicated. But the point is, if you oppose Prop 1’s $930 million “Let’s Move Seattle” transportation levy because you think it’s filled with pork (or filled with the wrong pork), well, I suppose there may be coherent arguments to make against the measure. But if you oppose Prop 1 because we’re “piling one pricey property tax levy on top of another,” then you’re not being honest either to yourself or to your readers.

* There is also the option of rarely-used voter-approved “excess levies,” which get around the statutory cap entirely, but since they are limited to 1 year, they’re not really practical for dealing with anything but an emergency.

Our gun violence paradox: How the US government undermines the protection of Americans

October 5, 2015 Nick Cassella

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Guns, Policy

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While listening to President Obama’s moving press conference after the UCC shooting, my interest was piqued by a phrase he used to describe the tragic situation. In exasperated tones, he asserted, “[Gun violence] is something we should politicize. It is relevant to our common life together. To the body politic.”

It’s been awhile since I’ve heard the term “body politic” referenced by a politician and its appearance in Obama’s remarks gave me pause. Here was a leader pleading for his nation to examine the motivations behind joining in “common life together.” In essence, he was asking us to consider: What is the primary duty of government?

At first, it sounds like a daunting question, but it is a question that has been answered many times by our nation’s presidents – and unvaryingly so. Thomas Jefferson wrote about the deontological priorites of our government, claiming, “[It is the obligation] of every government to yield protection to their citizens as the consideration for their obedience.” Ronald Reagan admitted, “Government’s first duty is to protect the people…” So, too, did George W. Bush: “I believe the most solemn duty of the American president is to protect the American people.” And so has our current president: “If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists – to protect them and to promote their common welfare – all else is lost.”

So, if the safeguarding of Americans is our government’s first duty, we are confronted with a paradox: What happens when the American people elect representatives who support policies which actively undermine the protection of Americans?

Lest you think that question is hypothetical, it is not; it represents what is happening in America today with gun violence.

Since 9/11, more than 150,000 Americans have been killed in gun homicides alone. As Fareed Zakaria highlights, that’s equivalent to nearly three Vietnams…in a 14 year span. Pull back the curtain even further and the image gets more terrifying. Since 1775, there have been 1.4 million Americans who have died during war. Shockingly, that number is matched by Americans who have died from guns since 1970.

And what have our representatives done about these catastrophic levels of deaths, these attacks on the body politic? Virtually nothing. In contrast, when faced with a foreign threat, the US government happily sacrifices its citizens’ rights in order to “protect” the people. It seems the American people have an insatiable appetite for safeguarding themselves from “the other” but not from one another.

A large part of the blame towards this perverted mindset can, and should, be assigned to the gun lobby. They undoubtedly influence the voting patterns of elected officials and block the will of the people. If you didn’t know, “most people in the US support background checks, bans on assault-style weapons, bans on high-capacity ammunition clips, bans on online sales of ammunition, and a federal database to track gun sales.” However, our elected officials also need to be assigned plenty of blame. They have continually failed to enact any of these well-supported regulations, and yet we continue to elect these same obstinate individuals into our local, state, and federal governments. For shame!

America is rotting from the inside-out due to inaction by the body politic. Only through our collective will can we right this wrong. We should never forget, as James Madison reminds us, “a dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government.” Alas, it seems we have forgotten this little treasure of sagacity. Gun violence in this country is a paradox that the American people created, and it’s only the American people who can solve it.

Jeb Bush’s Solution for Income Inequality: More Income Inequality!

September 9, 2015 Paul Constant

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2016, Economics, Policy

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Meet Jeb’s tax plan: “Just stay in the background, there, and we’ll throw you some pocket change.”

The most interesting thing about the tax plan that Jeb Bush announced today is that the tone is very different from most Republican tax plans. Everywhere, you’ll find commitments to supporting the middle class’s “right to rise,” as Bush’s campaign slogan promises, and you’ll even see a few references to making the top one percent pay their share in taxes. If you were to skim through Bush’s plan, you might even mistakenly believe it’s driven by a populist agenda. Bush is in an interesting place as a candidate: he (rightly) believes that income inequality is the biggest problem facing America today, but he just can’t bring himself to let go of the institutional mechanisms that caused the crippling inequality in the first place.

To be clear, some of Bush’s policies are coming from the right place. Like Donald Trump, he wants to tax the, as Trump calls them, “hedge fund guys.” Bush promises to “treat all noninvestment income the same, so unless you stake capital in an investment, you won’t be able to claim the capital-gains tax rate on your market gains.” Bush also calls to increase the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is a good idea. (Raising the EITC is something that Senators Patty Murray and Marco Rubio both advocate, though their implementations are obviously very different.) Bush’s plan also “nearly doubles the standard deduction now taken by roughly two-thirds of all filers” and it supposedly “eliminates the marriage penalty,” though Bush never clarifies exactly how it will do the latter. For the top earners, he wants to cap the number of deductions available to them. And, yes, he’s got the standard bit about closing loopholes, which every politician since King David has promised in one way or another.

That’s a significant amount of good stuff. It’s not perfect, obviously, but that’s the beauty of partisan politics — in theory, conservatives and liberals should be able to bat around these different approaches in pursuit of a greater ideal. But the problem is that these proposals are basically add-ons to the much more conventional tax plan hiding inside Bush’s plan. Once you push aside the obligatory lip service to the 99 percent, you discover who the real beneficiaries of this tax plan are: corporations and the very wealthy.

On the corporate tax side, let’s start with a positive: Bush wants to “eliminate the tax deduction for corporate borrowing,” in an attempt to discourage debt-heavy practices, and he wants businesses to be able to “immediately deduct new capital investments, like new factories or equipment,” rather than forcing them to dole out deductions in small amounts over seven years. Those are interesting ideas that deserve further examination. We need an economy that favors investment and growth, not debt and quick cash-outs, and it’s easy to imagine some of these policies in a Democratic tax plan.

But the rest is pretty much the exact same trickle-down blather we’ve been hearing for the last forty years. He wants to cut the corporate tax rate nearly by half and eliminate corporate taxes on overseas profits. He wants to trim the individual tax rate from seven brackets to three, and in so doing he plans to cut the top rate from 39.6 percent to 28 percent. It’s probably not surprising that in the face of all these cuts, he doesn’t offer any substantive suggestions for revenue.

Bush even throws the oldest of Republican canards, the end of the estate tax, into the mix, as though the thing that’s holding the nation back from growth is the fact that heirs don’t inherent every cent of their fortune. This, particularly, is baloney, considering the fact that 99.8 percent of estates presently owe no estate tax at all. It’s only the top .2 percent—a.k.a. the Bush family and their super-wealthy friends—who have to pay anything.

There’s nothing new here—nothing that would substantively alter income inequality in America today—but Bush promotes his ideas as a path to four percent growth. If there’s actual math behind his promise, he doesn’t bother to show his work. And it’s pretty obvious who bears the burden of growth in the plan when you look at one of Bush’s most pernicious proposals: he seeks to lift the Social Security tax on workers over age 67, thereby making retirement-age Americans more affordable for business to employ. It’s a crass move, a policy that encourages Americans to literally keep working until they die, and it’s the most telling sign that Bush is interested in fundamentally redefining the American Dream for most of our workers.

By lowering our expectations and readjusting what retirement means, Bush makes it even easier for the top one percent of all earners to keep raking in outsized profits for another generation or so. When he argues for the right to rise, it’s pretty obvious that Bush isn’t talking about your right to rise. His plan for dealing with the scourge of inequality is to keep the one percent climbing ever higher, even as the foundations of our economy rot and crumble.

Will Hillary Clinton Evolve on Pot Legalization?

September 2, 2015 Nick Cassella

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News, Policy, Pop Culture

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Political pundits from the right, center and left are complaining that Hillary Clinton doesn’t have a “sense of purpose or energy or mission.” Some, like David Brooks, worry that there’s an “unconscious boredom” with her candidacy. (This coming from the same David Brooks that mocked Obama as “The Chosen One” for being, I guess, too inspirational in his 2008 campaign. You’re a tough crowd, Dave.)

What the media fails to realize is that Hillary Clinton is not a “Yes We Can” sort of leader. She’s more of a “Let’s See How Things Progress & Then Respond Appropriately” type of candidate. Her support (and then opposition) of the Iraq War illustrates this strategy, as does her flip flop on gay marriage. She is a shrewd political creature who has a penchant for knowing when the time is ripe to change (or “evolve”) her views on certain issues.

Moreover, she also knows when to not stick her neck out on an issue: see the Keystone pipeline & TPP. This calculating behavior is what makes her so infuriating to her enemies and allies alike. She is the political embodiment of the prudent populist when it comes to divisive issues.

Enter marijuana legalization.

Back in 2007, Clinton was firmly against the decriminalization of the devil’s lettuce. Who can blame her? In that distant age, only about 36 percent of Americans favored legalization. But in a similar fashion to same-sex marriage, public opinion on this subject has changed rapidly. Now, 53 percent of Americans are fine with legalizing marijuana – which prompts the question to any serious presidential candidate: Would you support legalizing marijuana nationally?

This is what Clinton had to say in 2014:

On recreational [use], you know, states are the laboratories of democracy. We have at least two states that are experimenting with that right now. I want to wait and see what the evidence is.

In other words, “Let’s See How Things Progress & Then Respond Appropriately.”

The current state of marijuana in the USA.

However, a lot has changed since 2014. There could be more laboratories of democracy to come. While preparations are still under way, it looks like there will be legalization initiatives on the ballot in (at least) Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, and Nevada. If we assume for a second that all of these initiatives are successful in 2016, that would mean 1/5 of the US would have legal weed. And if we further assume that Hillary Clinton walks into the White House in 2017, she will be residing over a nation which has a deeply complicated relationship with marijuana.

If both of these hypotheticals turn out to be true, we most likely know how Hillary is going to face this issue. Her prudent populism isn’t that hard to decipher. As Paul Waldman identified, “with legalization becoming more popular, particularly in her party, don’t be surprised if Clinton begins a slow evolution in a more liberal direction on this issue, as she has on many others.”

In other words, it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when President Hillary Clinton would get behind marijuana legalization. An evolution on pot would tick so many boxes for her: it would make her appear forward-looking, it would alleviate the mass incarceration problem which predominately effects African-Americans, it would bring in the youth vote, and it would generate more revenue for local and federal governments which are in desperate need of some cash flow.

Is it that hard to imagine President Clinton standing before a teleprompter in the near future and announcing to the American people that “it’s time to turn this page in American history?”

I don’t think 2016 will be that final chapter. The marijuana legalization movement is too nascent and frankly, she understands that she does not need to put her neck out on this issue – yet. But could this be a defining political issue in 2020? The American people certainly do: 75 percent of Americans think that legal marijuana is an inevitability in this country. Marijuana’s time is nigh.

While she may not say so now, Hillary knows this as well. She is merely waiting to respond appropriately.

Policy