I'm sure it sounded like a good idea at the time but this proves once again these kind of limitations placed on leadership positions can and will be exploited.
In 2028, The State of Indiana is going to issue a corrected birth certificate for Pete Buttigieg showing him to be 32 years and therefore not eligible to be president.
I'm LGBT and I feel fairly confident in saying that there's no way in hell America will elect a gay man in my lifetime.
If Pete is the Democratic candidate, it's a freebie to the Republicans.
I think that Democrats that believe a Pete win is possible live in a bubble. Their views are invalid until they travel the States more to increase their exposure to the rest of the electorate.
I hope he runs, at the very least to keep LGBT people visible in all types of politics, but doesn't get past the primary. As much as I hate hate hate hate this, the Democratic party needs to find a charismatic straight white man, preferably one who has served in the military, probably in his late 40s or 50s. Not someone boring (hence the "charismatic" bit), but someone who "fits the mold", has clear policy proposals on things that average voters actually care about, and doesn't present as radical or "different" in any way.
This unfortunately means someone who won't push social/racial justice issues too hard (alienates white/religious/older people), won't be too science-focused (alienates voters without college degrees) and who will mainly focus on the economy and health care (what people actually claim to care about when making voting decisions), and at least make the right kinds of noises about crime and immigration (even though their impact on those things is somewhat limited as president).
Maybe someone like Mark Kelly would fit the bill, I dunno.
The Democrats don't need a white man, nor someone who served in the military or anything of that sort. People who think this are also living in a bubble. Obama wasn't elected via magic spell.
Democrats just need someone, anyone, who actually has the support of their own party. The last two times they ran someone like that, they won. The last two times they ran someone who either didn't win a primary, or who won a rigged one, they lost.
This feels like Politics 101 yet the party would rather make it about race and gender (not hard to see why - because it helps distract from the party leadership's mistakes and need for replacement...)
i think you're wrong and i certainly don't live in a bubble. but the reason i think you're wrong is not that america is progressive enough accept a gay man but because he's basically not gay; he's absolutely the least gay presenting man in the history of gay presenting men (exaggerating a little). he has no lisp, not an ounce of flamboyancy, nothing, zilch, nada. I'm aware he's fully out and there are photos of him with his husband and child and etc.
he's also young, handsome, ivy-league educated, was an officer in the military and deployed, intelligent, extremely well-spoken, and charismatic (not to mention experienced but who cares about such trivial things). he has all of the qualities that made obama successful in 2008 just swap black->gay. most importantly, and i'm not flaunting this: he's a man.
so i do hope he runs because he i think he has a better chance than bernie or kamala or walz or newsom or hakeem or aoc. but hey we all know there won't be an election in 2028 anyway so what are we even talking about here lol.
I really don't think any of that matters. "He can pass for straight" is not going to sway much of anyone who is uncomfortable with the idea of a gay president. Sure, some voters would be more comfortable with Buttigieg than with, say, a flamboyantly gay man, but overall I don't see the electorate going for him.
You're missing the key point of my claim: in 2008 you could literally take your comment, replace gay with black, and it would've been just as "credible". And yet Obama was enormously popular and successful. Lots of people even made colorist remarks about him being "white passing"!
I wonder if he'd "dedicate another apse in his cathedral mind" [0] to trying to find out.
The amount and shamelessness of sycophancy that modern American politicians cultivate is staggering (Trump being the chief example, of course - but seeing this with someone as relatively obscure as Pete is also spectacular).
> I'm LGBT and I feel fairly confident in saying that there's no way in hell America will elect a gay man in my lifetime.
I think its much more likely that America would elect a gay man than any member of the neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party.
Which, I mean, still means Pete is out, but for a different reason.
> I think that Democrats that believe a Pete win is possible live in a bubble. Their views are invalid until they travel the States more to increase their exposure to the rest of the electorate.
No one is going to win that doesn't understand that campaigns are about moving the electorate, not finding whether they are already are (from which a competent opponent will move them while you are chasing them.)
The Constitution requires Presidents “have attained to the Age of thirty five Years” [1]. It cites the fact, not the certificate.
The Turkish law doesn’t seem to require an education, it requires a degree. Minor difference. (And the text of the law wouldn’t matter in the end.) But an interesting difference nevertheless.
> Can't this be fixed easily by another university bestowing an honorary degree to this guy then?
No. That’s a technical solution to a political problem.
But, we’re on HN! Does anyone have a good English translation of the relevant statute? The loopholes to a certificate problem are with the certification authority—how is a compliant degree defined?
Very commonly seen in corporate politics. A promotion has certain requirements which seem objective, but all someone has to do to block your promotion is simply make sure you never get assigned any work which would fulfill the requirements.
United States from the 1890s to the 1960s required voters to pass a literacy before they could vote. We should bring back this rule. Voters should have a minimum level of knowledge about the world, science and democracy in order to vote. This would have prevented the current disaster which threatens not just our democracy, but by denying climate change, the entire planet.
I'm not even American and yet where I'm from it's common knowledge that literacy tests were used to systematically disenfranchise black people from voting.
You think at the time they openly said they were trying to take the vote from black people? Or did they say exactly what you're saying now, that they were simply trying to ensure that only smart and educated people could vote.
Your argument is valid, but isn't it clear that the status quo can't continue? Close to half of US voters decided it is OK to ignore climate change. Is it possible to educate them?
As you see in the article you linked, it was ruled unconstitutional only because it violated the 15th amendment. That amendment makes it illegal to deny the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude. It is still legal to deny the right to vote if someone is deemed not smart enough.
The literacy tests in question were designed from the start to be ambiguous, so that the same answers could be marked wrong for a black person and correct for a white person. Frankly, there is nothing that could convince me that the Republicans wouldn't try to repeat the same thing if given the opportunity.
It's incredibly naive to think that a tool like poll tests will only be used in the narrow way you personally would like them to be used.
No matter what kind of voter you particularly would like to target, the people administering the poll tests will (ab)use them to disenfranchise whomever they please.
Even if you believe the people in power who administer your elections would do this the "right" way, if you give them power, then the next people who come along -- who you may not agree with -- will also have that power.
Keep in mind that the word "dumb" gets thrown around in all sorts of situations and has no objective, easily-verifiable test for "dumbness". It's entirely plausible that merely "making a decision I disagree with" could be construed as "dumb". Imagine if, say, Biden and Fauci had decided to disenfranchise anyone who refused the COVID vaccine as "dumb", or, worse, Trump and RFK decided that taking those vaccines made you "dumb". See how easily this can be abused?
Even with that aside, the natural consequence of disenfranchising "dumb" people is that you want to fuck them over somehow. No thanks.
I suspect that any configurable or discretionary barrier to voting will be used to disenfranchise voters unfairly, at least some times in some places. As it is, I'm aware of an age requirement (18 years) and a criminal status requirement (not a felon, sometimes just not incarcerated).
A literacy/civics/logic/knowledge/etc. requirement would at best discriminate against people who are uninformed, unintelligent, uneducated, unable or unwilling to take a written test, etc. But they are people whom the laws affect and who should be able to vote. I don't think that they are a comparable category to the exceptions mentioned above, but that's debatable.
Most importantly, the test would be optimized to exclude whoever the test designers and proctors consider, knowingly or not, unworthy.
I understand the desire to exclude the dummies. I know thoughtful and educated people who espouse the same wish, but it's just too dangerous.
If you've seen some of the kinds of poll tests that were administered, especially during the Jim Crow era, you'd change your tune. These tests can very easily be structured to be ambiguous, and can be graded in such a way to disqualify whatever groups of people you want.
creating unbiased tests is a really difficult thing to do even when trying really hard, and whatever tests we have for voting would absolutely get used to disenfranchise certain groups of people. just look at how bad gerrymandering is despite being explicitly illegal
Mysteriously, the requirements are tightened up and/or new ones are invented every time a credible-looking opposition candidate pops up. Most famously, before the 2017 election the requirement was imposed that the president has to be selected from a rotating selection of races, in this case Malay, which by complete coincidence disqualified the otherwise-qualified Chinese opposition candidate:
