You've heard of soccer moms, cybervoters and boomer grannies -- obscure segments of the population that definitely decided previous elections and put the country on a firm path to cyber-soccer for grandmothers. What segment of the electorate will rise to determine the winner of the 2016 election?
As the Washington Examiner's Paul Bedard reported Tuesday, Americans For Tax Reform founder Grover Norquist is bullish on the vaping community -- people who smoke e-cigarettes instead of "acoustic cigarettes" -- as a voting bloc that could potentially throw the election from some vape-regulating square to an of-the-now candidate who backs the cool, new way to fill the yawning hole in your life with a chemical:
"I think that the next election, at the presidential level, and a lot of other levels, is going to be determined by the vaping community," said Grover Norquist, founder of Americans for Tax Reform.
OK, man. Sure, let's set this off.
Norquist sees pending regulation of the vape industry as a threat to the way of life so eloquently elucidated by actor Stephen Dorff in the beat poem, "I, Actor Stephen Dorff, Am Constantly Vaping Everywhere I Go":
But can 10 million vapers be transformed into a mighty, single-issue election-determining force, or is Norquist just doing a little cagey coalition-building to draw more supporters into his mission to rid the planet of taxes, regulations and Democrats who love taxes and regulations? I'll let the man speak for himself:
"Vaping is not a product. It is a movement. It is a community, it is a political movement in support of a community and it's changing the country in very good ways," he said at a reception during a two-day lobbying effort on Capitol Hill by the [Smoke-Free Alternatives Trade Association] last week.
To be honest, "vapers will pick the president" is just as good a theory as any other I've heard about the 2016 election.
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Jason Linkins edits "Eat The Press" for The Huffington Post and co-hosts the HuffPost politics podcast, "So, That Happened." Subscribe here. Listen to the latest episode below.