Democrats Aren’t Sure Whether To Make Jeff Sessions’ Pot Crackdown An Election Issue
Channel: ZSTY011 NEWS
Date: 2018-01-06

Democrats Aren’t Sure Whether To Make Jeff Sessions’ Pot Crackdown An Election Issue.

WASHINGTON ? Leading Democrats blasted Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ Thursday announcement that he would open the door to a federal crackdown on states that have decriminalized forms of marijuana use.

Sessions’ action reverses a Department of Justice policy from the Barack Obama administration that effectively shielded those states from federal prosecution.

Sessions “needs to focus on issues like transnational criminal organizations” and what the nation needs to do on “investigating and prosecuting human trafficking,” Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), a rumored 2020 presidential candidate, told HuffPost on Thursday.

Sessions “needs to leave grandma’s medicinal marijuana alone!” she continued with a chuckle.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), a centrist, declared that the move “would seem to be the absolute opposite direction of where the country’s headed and one more example of this administration being completely out of step with where both Americans are headed and, for that matter, Democratic and Republican state legislatures.”

“This is a big mistake,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) told HuffPost. “In those states where the people in the states have made a determination to decriminalize or legalize marijuana ... the federal government would better spend its resources going after real problems we’ve got.”

But criticizing Sessions’ move is one thing. Turning his marijuana crackdown into an election-year political cudgel ? in stump speeches, campaign literature and ads ? is something else entirely. 

And when asked whether Democrats planned to use the marijuana crackdown against Republicans in the November elections, some of the same Democrats keen to clobber Sessions were noncommittal.

“It’s way too early to predict that,” Warner said.

Van Hollen, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Senate campaign arm, said, “Every Democratic member of the Senate will have to decide what’s best in their states.” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), who also expressed her displeasure with Sessions’ decision, argued that Democrats ought to run on kitchen-table economic issues rather than marijuana.

“There are so many other things to run on, like the tax bill that just passed that does not help working families at all,” she said in an interview.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee did not respond to multiple email requests for comment on the political salience of Sessions’ move. The DSCC referred HuffPost back to Van Hollen’s remarks.

When asked about making marijuana an election issue, Democratic National Committee spokesman Michael Tyler provided a statement indicting Sessions’ “morally bankrupt and economically stupid” decision without commenting on the potential political effect. 

Part of the challenge for Democrats who might want to turn Sessions’ move into a partisan issue is that so many of their Republican colleagues responded with similar outrage. Lawmakers from states that have legalized the drug, including Sens. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), were especially firm in their criticism. In a scathing floor speech, Gardner, who chairs the National Republican Senate Committee, the GOP Senate’s campaign arm, said he was “prepared to take all steps necessary” to get Sessions to reverse the decision, including holding up Department of Justice nominees.

Warner and Hirono both cited Republican condemnations in explaining the difficulty of making marijuana an election-year issue.

Still other Democrats were reluctant to even condemn Sessions’ order. Sens. Bob Casey (Pa.), Jack Reed (R.I.) and Tammy Baldwin (Wis.), who faces a tough reelection battle, all said they were still too unfamiliar with Sessions’ action to comment. (Casey later issued a statement expressing “serious concerns about how this action by Attorney General Sessions could impact Pennsylvania’s medical marijuana law.”)

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) also pleaded ignorance when asked about the matter at a Thursday news conference.

“I haven’t seen” Sessions’ comments on marijuana, Schumer said.
Jeff Hauser, a former political communications chief at the AFL-CIO who runs the progressive Center for Economic and Policy Research’s executive branch accountability project, observed that congressional Republicans, partly at the prodding of the libertarian-leaning Koch brothers, have warmed to criminal justice reform in recent years.

But Democrats would be mistaken to think that they are forfeiting opportunities for bipartisan progress by making an unrepentant drug warrior like Sessions a political liability for Republicans, according to Hauser.

“If Democrats get elected in part on this platform, that will ultimately make passing a [bipartisan reform] bill more likely because Republicans will want to put the issue in the past,” Hauser said. “The way you get Republicans to repudiate hacks like Jeff Ses