President Biden is pulling rabbits out of hats, targeting one voter group after another. Just lately, he went after the pothead vote. The president’s most recent act of desperation as he tries to avoid a rout in the midterm elections is to pardon people who are in federal prison for pot possession. 

“No one should be in jail for possessing marijuana,” intoned the president. Yet no one is. Not a single person is in a federal hoosegow for possessing pot. The estimated 6,500 people who may receive a pardon under Biden’s new edict were either released some time ago or have served their sentences. 

No doubt that a pardon might help those formerly incarcerated get a job or a car loan, though many states have already banned asking job applicants about their criminal history. There may be more people in state lockups for possession charges, and states could review their criminal codes after Mr. Biden’s move.

The reality, though, is that there has never been a huge number of Americans in prison — state or federal — simply because they held a small amount of marijuana. This is a Democratic Party fiction which has led to its embrace of dangerous laws like those nigh eliminating bail in New York State.

Persons who are incarcerated for possession have usually pled down from a more serious crime, like dealing. A study conducted in 2015 showed that in the federal prison system, which in 2020 housed 226,000 people, more than 99 percent of those sentenced for drugs were accused of not just possession but trafficking. 

More broadly, in state and federal prisons some 94 percent of prisoners have not faced a jury; instead, they have reached a plea deal with overworked prosecutors and copped to a lesser crime, like possession. This is less about righting past wrongs than about targeted vote-buying by a desperate White House.  

The marijuana pardons are meant to shore up enthusiasm among critical Democratic voters. “While white and Black and brown people use marijuana and similar rates,” Mr. Biden said in announcing the move, “Black and brown people are arrested, prosecuted and convicted at disproportionately higher rates.”  

A recent Reuters-Ipsos poll shows Mr. Biden’s approval rating overall at 40 percent, up a few points from the summer low of 36 percent. Yet  the breadth of Biden’s disapproval must be causing Democrats fits. There are only two demographics that are positive on Mr. Biden: urban voters and those in the Northeast.

According to the Reuters poll, Mr. Biden is underwater with white, non-white, men, women, college, non-college, suburban, rural, persons under forty, persons over forty, those making under $75,000, and those making more than that, the Midwest, the South and the West.

Other than that, by gum, he’s doing great. Plus, the male/female vote is newsworthy, in that both groups disapprove of the president at about the same level, 54 percent and 53 percent; historically, Mr. Biden has done much better with women. Ditto the young (52 percent disapprove) and not-young categories (53 percent disapprove.)

Despite assurances from the persnickety press over the summer that a Red Wave had fizzled, the reality is that Republicans may be about to crush Democrats on November 8. If, as expected, gasoline prices head higher in the wake of OPEC’s decision to cut production 2 million barrels a day, Mr. Biden will be held responsible.

As he should be. America is waking up to the real cost of Democrats’ infatuation with curbing climate change and hostility to our own oil and gas producers. Rising gasoline and heating oil costs will feed into still-high inflation, offsetting some of the moderating influences on prices

That suggests the Federal Reserve, which is no longer independent of the White House, will have to continue to hike interest rates. That is not a good scenario for the party in charge. Voters’ top issues remain inflation and the economy. Marijuana pardons don’t make the cut. Sometimes — abracadabra! — the rabbit gets away.