Democratic Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has pushed back against a suggestion by Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias to challenge the age eligibility requirement for US presidents.
Democratic Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has pushed back against a suggestion by Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias to challenge the age eligibility requirement for US presidents.
"How about....no," Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter Wednesday. "Sometimes political media is too fixated on personalities instead of policies."
"The whole country JUST went through an exhausting midterm election. We need a break," she continued. "Can we instead talk about healthcare, a living wage, legalizing cannabis, GND, & other issues?"
Hours prior, in a Vox piece, Yglesias had bemoaned the requirement that prevents twenty-nine-year-old Ocasio-Cortez from running for president. "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the biggest star in the Democratic Party, and she has been ever since she unseated Rep. Joe Crowley in a surprise primary upset in May...Yet a completely ridiculous constitutional provision makes her ineligible to run for president," Yglesias wrote. That provision requires that one must be at least 35 to run the country. Yglesias then commented: "We currently have a septuagenarian in the White House whose frequent nonsensical diatribes and notoriously scattered Twitter outbursts repeatedly raise the prospect of mental decline." After pointing out people her age and younger are routinely "trusted with life-and-death situations in a huge array of contexts, ranging from parenting to military service," he did acknowledge that "realistically, most people that young would simply have a hard time winning an election." Yglesias added: "But if you can pull it off, you should be allowed. And I kind of think she should run for president."
