If so, then why?
He can, because there’s no law against it. Probably nobody thought there’d ever need to be!
As an outsider that’s pretty wild. So you can’t buy a firearm but you can be president and control them all. Like what?
Actually the thought is if the government can just imprison you to stop your candidacy, they have too much power.
Thus they can continue to run.
I would say just don’t break any laws then, but laws can change and people are terrible.
Edit: Pretty sure you’re all downvoting a misunderstanding.
I’m saying I get why it’s a thing because people would convict their opponents. Not that I was actually saying well don’t break any laws.
Remember, there is a mechanism that prevents criminals from winning elections and holding offices, it’s the one that’s the best one in a democracy. The voters.
It’s not good to give governments the power to decide who does and doesn’t deserve to hold authority, it is good to let voters decide if someone’s crimes are relevant to the election.
Sadly, it seems many Americans do not agree with me that trump is not suitable for office. Hopefully enough do that they decide not to vote for him
We’ve got these things called “social media” that are built expressly for the purpose of influencing people to buy more stuff (literally in the name: influencers). And if it can get people to part with their money, you can be sure the same tools can be used to get people to vote against their own interests.
We thought the internet was a tool to spread democracy. We were wrong. The Internet is a tool used to undermine democracy, so long as people using the Internet are not strongly inoculated against organized interests, foreign, and domestic.
The concern of the founding fathers was that one state would have political reasons to rush a trial and get a legitimate candidate convicted of a crime in their court. If the conviction was legitimate, it was supposed to be handled by the Electors of the Electoral College.
My man Eugen Debbs ran from prison in the early 1900s. He was thrown in prison for speaking out again the war (the first amendment wasn’t much protection back in the day).
It is good that he could run, since he was a political prisoner. He advocated for the common man against the corrupt institutions.
But the kicker is that he isn’t allowed to vote right? New York restore voting rights after you have completed your sentence if I remember correctly.
He’s a Florida resident now, but I believe they also take away the right to vote for felons until their sentence is complete.
Florida… HAHAHAHA, this is effin’ to good to be true… in Florida you risk lose your voting rights FOREVER!!!
Keep in mind that the founding fathers were guilty of what would have been considered a lot of grave crimes by England, which was formerly the jurisdiction that applied to them.
So they probably wouldn’t have had a huge appetite for blocking political rights of criminals given their recent standing.
I find it wild that a felon loses their right to vote, but they could run for office. So he could run for president, but he can’t vote for himself. 🤨
If a convicted felon loses their right to vote, they should not be allowed to run for president.
And if he wins again, he’s going to Pardon everybody who buys one from him. Including himself. Because there’s no law against it, and nobody thought that there ever needed to be for that either.
He can’t pardon himself for this one, it’s a State level crime, not a Federal one.
You’d think the bad publicity alone would be enough to destroy any chance of election. You’d think.
Not when he has been creating a narrative since 2020 that he was the real winner of that election and all these court cases are just designed to try and stop him from being President.
His supporters have bought the premium subscription to this narrative, so nothing is going to change their minds. In fact, the more court cases there are, the more support he gets.
Even though going after him for his alleged crimes is the right thing to do, I actually wish they’d just let him fade into obscurity instead. Because all it has ended up doing is helping his campaign.
Well then you’re just letting him win. He’s still going to do his thing and get supporters. Convicting him gives some amount of validity that he’s doing something wrong. Unfortunately he got his hands on a lot of gullible people before someone better could, so we can’t change their minds no matter what we do. Hopefully making his crimes so public will make those not fully converted less likely to buy into his cult.
Bad publicity is relative.
The “bad publicity” when he is an odious asshole? His base loves that, they think they all should be able to say that stuff out loud.
Legal problems? Well they firmly believe it’s just a conspiracy to witch hunt and every case serves only to fuel their persecution complex
Anything else? Lies by the liberal media, they see the truth on Fox News. When Fox News even reports on it, then they shun them and off to newsmax or just their favorite Facebook posts.
Yes, and it’s important that felons be able to run for president. Were that not the case, a corrupt enough system could just disqualify anyone that would seek to oust it.
This is true.
But, it must also be pointed out that that’s another case of good faith actors getting fucked by assholes. In theory this sounds good, like free speech and tolerance for all. But when you are dealing with criminals and sociopaths those virtues get used against you.
Yeah but honestly without implementing ‘one true philosophy’ I can’t see any ground to stand on where they shouldn’t be allowed to.
What if god comes down tomorrow and says ‘the fuck you guys are keeping babies instead of killing them?!?’
To us we really got no frame of reference of an absolute ‘good faith’ or bad, so enforcing it just seems like encouraging abuse of the system.
Good and bad faith doesn’t refer to anything about religion.
Acting in good faith means you’re not using deception or hypocrisy and your words and arguments reflect your true beliefs and the intent behind your actions. You use words to express what they mean.
Acting in bad faith means you present a false front to deceive others into thinking you are someone you are not. Your words and arguments do not align with what you believe or why you act. You use words to get what you want or confuse those who might otherwise oppose you.
Not that that distinction makes it any easier to recognize good or bad faith in general. Or to convince those who put their faith in bad people that they should re-examine their position. It just doesn’t necessarily refer to any kind of religious experience.
Yup! Because that’s the law. The original idea was to keep people in power from being able to outmaneuver their opponents by having them arrested. That was back when politicians and corporations had some level of public accountability though.
So felons can run for president, they just can’t vote for who they want though?
Debs ran from prison (for the high crime of telling people that WWI was none of our business and people shouldn’t enlist to get turned toa pink mist in Belgium) in 1920
As for voting as a felon, that varies state to state. I don’t think there’s anyplace that allows people to vote from prison, but quite a few states let convicted felons vote once they’ve completed their sentence and any parole that follows it (and in some states, pay additional fines, which sounds a bit like a poll tax to me, but I’m not one of our nine kritarchs, so what do I know about that sort of thing?)
As for people running for office when they couldn’t vote, Elizabeth Cady Stanton ran for office well before she could have voted, and the first woman elected to Congress (Jeanette Rankin) was elected in 1916, several years before women’s suffrage was added to the constitution, though her state, Montana, had allowed women to vote already.
The Constitution spells out who is eligible to run for President, and does not say criminals are ineligible. It’s as simple as that.
I do find it odd that you guys put so much emphasis on a document written in a time nothing like today.
Like surely it should evolve, but I can see how that would go right now so it’s probably for the best.
Just because an idea is old, doesn’t mean its a bad idea. And we do have mechanisms for modifying the constitution. We just don’t do it often because it requires a lot of agreement.
I think we have more enlightened and more informed views now than 270 years ago is alls I’m saying.
Just the right to bare arms is such an example. Weapons are completely different these days.
Yeah it’s because Americans are fucking terrible at governing.
The vast, vast majority of Americans do not care about their elected officials. Most do not even know who they are, and just vote based on party affiliation or don’t vote at all. Our government structure also fundamentally doesn’t work, and we would be far better served adopting a parliamentary system like the rest of the developed world, but nobody cares enough to do anything. Our courts are corrupt thanks to Donald Trump, gerrymandering means our elections are hardly fair, the list goes on.
America has an apathetic government that accomplishes very little and is easily captured by hostile forces because it is exactly the level of government Americans are willing to put in the effort for.
