Ground Game Texas

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Democrats need a winning message. We propose: ‘Workers, wages and weed.’

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    Ground Game Texas Staff
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Originally published in The Washington Post on July 13, 2021:

According to the Pew Research Center, 91 percent of Americans say marijuana should be legal for medical or recreational use. A Reuters/Ipsos poll from February found that roughly 6 out of 10 voters supported a $15 minimum wage. And other recent polls found that more than 80 percent of likely voters supported paid leave programs for workers.

In Nebraska, more than 80 percent of voters last year chose to cap the interest on payday loans, allowing the state’s workers to keep more of their paychecks. In Florida, where Trump won by more than 3 percentage points, more than 60 percent of voters approved a $15 minimum wage. And in South Dakota, which Trump won by 26 percentage points, nearly 70 percent of voters approved medical marijuana.

Yet the Democratic Party failed to ensure that voters in these states and elsewhere knew which party was fighting for these issues. And we missed a critical opportunity to carve out support from independents and moderate Republicans who agree with us.

Joe Biden, in defeating Donald Trump, won more votes than any presidential candidate in U.S. history. But as we saw with several ballot initiatives from this past election cycle, a handful of issues outperformed Biden in red

We’ve dubbed these “workers, wages and weed.”

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