Every election season is rife with predictions.
The 2016 presidential election exposed how many of the predictors are often wrong.
This can be true at the national level, as well as the state and local level.
There were many who had predicted Democratic candidate Mike Espy had a legit shot at unseating incumbent Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith this week, but that turned out to be obvious wishful thinking.
There were also some who thought former Vice President Joe Biden had a shot at flipping Texas.
Again, a long shot.
The one that surprised me the most, however, was the result of Mississippi’s medical marijuana battle.
There was Initiative 65, which was a grassroots measure that made it on the ballot by way of voter signatures, and there was the legislative alternative, 65A.
Both promised to create some form of a legal medical marijuana industry in the state.
A week ago, I told people in private that I believed Initiative 65 would get creamed in the Nov. 3 election.
Boy, was I wrong?
The grassroots initiative got 74% of the vote.
That’s astounding.
I honestly didn’t think Initiative 65 would pass with Mississippi voters.
The Legislature probably thought the same thing until Tuesday night.
But if I had paid less attention to my instincts when it comes to conservative Mississippi values and more toward the obvious overall shift in thinking on pot in general, this could have been easily foreseen.
This wasn’t a liberal versus conservative issue.
There were people on both sides of the fence pushing both initiatives for a variety of reasons.
In fact, many Republicans in the state backed 65. There were plenty in the GOP establishment that spoke out against it as well.
There were a lot of good points on both sides, but folks like myself underestimated the libertarian ideological shift when it comes to liberals and conservatives and their views on pharmaceuticals.
Over the past decade, Americans on the left and right have become more leery of vaccines.
This is not the time or the place to discuss the merits of either side of that debate, but it’s worth noting that the seeds of doubt against big pharma were planted long ago, and medical pot in Mississippi might be the biggest harvest of that crop to date.
President Donald Trump has had his finger on the pulse of these debates as well.
Back in 2018, Trump signed Right to Try legislation that allows terminally ill patients who have exhausted all conventional treatments to try experimental drugs.
Also, Americans have been ravaged by the opioid crisis over the past two decades.
Addiction and overdoses have been rampant and have affected both impoverished communities, as well as the middle class.
Mississippians have not been immune to this.
Medical marijuana, to many, represents a safer alternative to treating chronically ill patients, including adults with chronic pain and children who have constant seizures.
Ailments like epilepsy, dementia, PTSD and cancer know no political boundaries. They don’t attack one class over another.
The Legislature basically ignored the cries of the people for far too long, nixing one medical pot bill after another over the last decade-plus.
They misjudged Mississippi voters.
So did I.
