Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in response to running for president, “How about…no.”
The incoming congresswoman tweeted on Wednesday in response to an article from Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias to run for president.
Ocasio-Cortez said the 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 wrote. “Can we instead talk about healthcare, a living wage, legalizing cannabis, GND, & other issues?”
Ocasio-Cortez made history in November by becoming the youngest woman ever elected to Congress when she defeated 10-term House Democratic Caucus chairman Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.) in the primary for New York’s 14th Congressional District.
{mosads}Yglesias argued in his Vox column on Wednesday that it was “ridiculous” that it would be unconstitutional for Ocasio-Cortez to make a White House run.
Under the Constitution, presidential candidates must be at least 35 years old. Ocasio-Cortez is 29 years old.
“While the law prevents anyone under the age of 35 from becoming president, 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,” Yglesias wrote. “Meanwhile, the top two Democrats in national polling — Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden — are 77 and 76, respectively.”
Yglesias argued that Ocasio-Cortez, 29, “isn’t that young.”
“People younger than that are routinely trusted with life-and-death situations in a huge array of contexts, ranging from parenting to military service,” he wrote.
John F. Kennedy was the youngest president ever elected at age 43.