Remember Joe Kennedy III? The sexy ginger dude who gave the Democratic response to Trump's first State of the Union address ten thousand years ago back in January?

Kennedy delivered the Democratic response because, like everyone with D after his name, he's thinking about running for president in 2020. It was a good speech and it got some people talking about how we might wanna think about putting another Kennedy in the White House. But immediately after Kennedy delivered what was seen as a good enough speech—a qualifying speech—Kennedy turned around and gave a disqualifying interview to Vox's Ezra Klein. In it Kennedy came out strongly against legalizing recreational marijuana because "marijuana was an illegal substance [and] if you smelled it in a car, you could search a car."

By "you" Kennedy meant "cops." As I wrote at the time:

Kennedy's beef with legalizing pot is that doing so stopped cops from randomly pulling people over and searching their cars? He cites this—the ability of the police to search anyone's car, at any time, so long as the cops remember to put, "Thought I smelled pot!" in the incident reports—as a "foundational principle" for law enforcement and something that voters didn't have in mind when they legalized recreational marijuana. (Something voters have had to do because our elected officials are too cowardly to do it themselves.) Joe Kennedy III sounds like he's channeling Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III here.

Kennedy went on to say a lot other misinformed (or disingenuous) things about pot: we can't treat drug abuse a public health issue and legalize marijuana (we manage to treat alcohol abuse as a public health issue despite the repeal of Prohibition), criminalizing the sale and possession of marijuana keeps it out of the hands of teenagers (teenagers everywhere: "Ha ha ha!"), "disparate racial outcomes" are concerning but not concerning enough to do anything about, etc. And, contra Kennedy, voters did have stripping cops of their power to randomly search people's cars when they voted to legalize marijuana in Washington and other states—that's literally been one of the pro-legalization campaigns' top talking points.

I wrapped up my post about Kennedy's position on pot with this:

Ugh, Joe. If you do decide to run for president you're gonna need to do on this social issue what our last Democratic president did on a very different social issue: EVOLVE.

And that's just what Kennedy has done:

On the day the first two state-sanctioned recreational pot shops opened their doors in Massachusetts, Representative Joseph Kennedy III came out in favor of legalizing marijuana at the federal level, reversing his previous opposition to it... “Given the rapid pace of state-level legalization and liberalization, I believe we must implement strong, clear, and fair federal guidelines. To do that requires us to remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and legalize it at the federal level,” he said. Kennedy opposed his home state’s move to legalize marijuana, which voters approved by ballot measure in 2016, and as recently as March voiced skepticism of the push to legalize the drug.

Kennedy told the Boston Globe that his "concerns have not abated," concerns that led him to "[establish] himself as one of the Democratic caucus’ most consistent opponents of marijuana decriminalization efforts, casting votes against several bills, including a 2015 measure that would have prevented the Department of Justice from going after medical marijuana businesses in states that have approved the industry."

Kennedy's concerns were (and remain) overblown or specious—but they're no match for his ambitions. And give the man credit for being able to track polling data: overwhelming majority of Americans favor legalizing marijuana.

About six-in-ten Americans (62%) say the use of marijuana should be legalized, reflecting a steady increase over the past decade, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. The share of U.S. adults who support marijuana legalization is little changed from about a year ago—when 61% favored it—but it is double what it was in 2000 (31%). As in the past, there are wide generational and partisan differences in views of marijuana legalization. Majorities of Millennials (74%), Gen Xers (63%) and Baby Boomers (54%) say the use of marijuana should be legal. Members of the Silent Generation continue to be the least supportive of legalization (39%), but they have become more supportive in the past year.

Seven-in-ten Democrats support legalizing recreational marijuana. No Democrat who opposes legal pot has a chance in 2020.