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Can marijuana be a wedge issue for democrats?
Republicans are better at exploiting wedge issues than Democrats
In a way, you can understand where conservatives are coming from. To them, it seems like the world is completely out of control. The traditional image of an American family — 2 parents, married man and woman, church-going, patriarchal, white-centric — seem to be going the way of the dodo bird. These used to be social norms, society’s accepted way of doing things. Any behaviors that did not comport with those norms was viewed as abnormal, “weird,” “unacceptable.”
How things have changed. Now, only the most well-educated get and stay married. Most working class and poor families either involve cohabitation or single-parent households. The marriage norm is no longer the accepted way to have a family.
Similarly, by far the largest religion in America is people who are not part of an organized religion, at 38.6%. By contrast, evangelicals constitute 25.4% of the population, and Catholics 20.8. Mainline protestant religions — you know, the famous WASPS — only claim 14.7% adherence. And the number of unaffiliated is growing. These trends are consistent across just about every demographic group.
Change has come fast too. I remember the 1980s, when it was still accepted to make gay jokes. Not…
