Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate

Re:Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate by troyvit on Monday July 22, 2024 @12:29PM (#41036290)

There's a constitutional requirement that the candidate must be at least 35[1], which seems arbitrary to me. That was decided in 1787. I wonder what age they would have picked as a maximum age back then. I say that because (at least these days) it seems almost impossible to change, and people live a lot longer. Like we might be stuck with "Any age between 35 and 57" because people died young in 1787 relative to now.

[1] https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/why-does-a-presidential-...

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Re:Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate by Suppafly on Monday July 22, 2024 @03:19PM (#41038649)

I wonder if you can reliably adjust ages for 'inflation' like you can for other things. 35 back in 1787 has be to close to 50 or so today.

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Re:Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate by jjk166 on Monday July 22, 2024 @07:02PM (#41040730)

It's worth noting that the age requirements selected then were less about wisdom and experience, and more about residency in the US. The chief fear at the time was a European power manipulating the country to put a puppet in charge, so to avoid this they wanted to limit power to those who had resided in the US for a long time, but they also didn't want to preclude themselves from holding offices in the future. These numbers (35 for president, 30 for senator, and 25 for house representative) represent a compromise - note that the constitution's primary authors were 36 and 31 at the time it was signed, and the youngest signer was 26.

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