We have a voting populace that is increasingly in favor of things like marijuana legalization, that doesn't want government micro-managing their lives and personal choices- that doesn't like Theocracy but also doesn't like censorship whether it comes from the right OR "left", campus speech bans and laws against "oversized" sodas.
Unfortunately, the public face of the Democratic Party and DNC chair decided, in the middle of an election that saw unprecedented support for cannabis, to go to the NY Times and quack about how important it is for the government to be able to keep putting pot smokers in prison.
We need to become (again) the party of personal freedom. To stand up for the 1st Amendment and the right of consenting adults to make their own decisions about their own bodies. That includes reproductive freedom, to be sure, it also includes the right of terminally ill people to choose a dignified exit on their own terms. It ALSO includes the right of people in pain to have adequate pain management, which flies directly in the face of hyperbolic drug war hysteria over the "prescription drug crisis", which is pretty clearly a thinly veiled excuse for the DEA to find a new mandate as they lose their pot-fighting gravy train.
(Yes, there are problems with opiates and prescription drugs, but "crackdowns" and authoritarianism only drive more people to the black market. This has been shown time and again. It is time for us to approach these matters from a new perspective, one that isn't obsessively focused on keeping people from obtaining an unauthorized buzz or putting "forbidden" substances into what are, after all, their own fucking bodies)
Yes, we need a consistent and strong economic message, but that is only half of the equation. Once in power, the GOP will likely knee-jerk towards authoritarianism. We need to be seen as the party that supports the right of citizens to run their own damn lives.
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