UPDATE: TIME left Bernie Sanders off of the shortlist of potential winners for Person of the Year, despite his winning the online readers’ poll.
TIME Magazine’s editors will ultimately have the final say, but their readers have made it clear that Bernie Sanders should be the 2015 TIME Person of the Year. The cannabis community certainly chipped in to help Sanders win the TIME readers’ poll as marijuana legalization and criminal justice reforms have been major foundations of his candidacy.
If TIME’s editors agree with the readers’ poll, the Vermont Senator would become the first presidential candidate to win the award. In addition to his progressive Drug War policies, Sen. Sanders has dominated the Democratic political discourse by focusing on major issues of the day, such as income inequality and climate change, while calling for a political revolution of the people to overturn a political system dominated by big-money interests. From TIME:
The Vermont Senator won with a little more than 10% of the vote when the poll closed Sunday at midnight. That’s well ahead of Pakistani girls’ education activist Malala Yousafzai, who was in second place at 5.2%, and Pope Francis, TIME’s 2013 Person of the Year, who finished third with 3.7%.
Sanders also placed far ahead President Obama (3.5%) and ahead other 2016 candidates, including Republican Donald Trump (1.8%) and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton (1.4%).
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Sanders has said his goal is a political revolution that will reenergize the electorate and push big money out of politics. “A lot of people have given up on the political process, and I want to get them involved in it,” Sanders told TIME in a September cover story. “In this fight we are going to take on the greed of the billionaire class. And they are very, very powerful, and they’re going to fight back furiously. The only way to succeed is when millions of people stand up and decide to engage.”
Not surprisingly, Bernie Sanders has done very well on internet polls. The online community has overwhelmingly named him the winner of Democratic debates and the marijuana law reform community has a very strong presence online, helping shape political discourse whenever possible. Conventional presidential candidates normally shy away from progressive criminal justice stances, but Sanders’ positions on ending cannabis prohibition and revamping the failed War on Drugs haven’t hindered his campaign.
Sanders has helped move the entire Democratic Party towards sensible Drug War policies as presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton has stopped taking money from the private prison lobby and now believes that states should be able to legalize marijuana without interference and that cannabis should be rescheduled to Schedule II. Whether he ultimately wins the presidency or not, Bernie Sanders impact upon our drug policy and greater political discourse has been immensely important, making him a deserving choice for TIME Person of the Year. Here’s hoping that TIME’s editors decide to follow their readers and, more importantly, that voters across the nation cast votes for the Democratic candidate that wants to end the failed and harmful Drug War, an ill-fated policy that he opposed four decades ago.
