Landrieu Should Be For Legalizing Marijuana

The odd thing about the cynical thought process that I am having with trying to account for Mayor Landrieu's actions is that I keep coming up with things that are technically good to do for the city overall. But he is a Democrat, and is likely to lose to a black candidate, as happened to his family before...

... Unless white Democrats have learned something from the recent elections...

Which leads me to something he ought to be spending some serious political capital on- legalizing marijuana in Louisiana.

To recap, it seems to me he got rid of the Confederate statues in an attempt to consolidate his power. His primary weakness is competition from a black candidate who could mobilize a black populace that can overwhelm the white populace, should they be bothered to vote. He's done something black mayors never got round to doing, and he's not really appealing to blacks, but to white Democrats.

He needs more white Democrats. He and the governor need more money flowing into the state. Colorado and other states have established marijuana businesses that have a problem- banks are trying to stay on the right side of the U.S. government by discriminating against these businesses. So they've got a lot of cash reserves sitting around...

New Orleans would be an ideal investment for these businesses- especially if Louisiana politicians got their heads out of their asses and facilitated it.

And, again, old Landrieu can turn New Orleans into a white democrat Shangri-La.

I don't know if he thinks this way, but if he did think about New Orleans as a family possession, then at least some of the things he would do would actually be good, because he'd be thinking as a owner, not as a bureaucrat who is only going to have access to the cookie jar for a limited time. Of course, trying to pack a city full of people who are going to vote for you and your family seems a little harder than just being a straightforward aristocrat, but I suppose one has to work with what one has got.

#Update: Googling Landrieu and Marijuana yields evidence that he's certainly decriminalized it within the city. Unfortunately for him, he's got to get the state to go along if he wants the out of state investments to find their way here.