'The humiliation continues': Slate doing their part to make Elizabeth Warren 0/1024th POTUS

Slate’s been trying to help Elizabeth Warren dig her way out of her ever-embiggening grave. But instead of rescuing her, today, they just handed her another shovel:

Will other politicians be bullied into releasing their genetic information, too? https://t.co/Ov2CsRLgnI pic.twitter.com/Ea0QWzG4f5

— Slate (@Slate) October 17, 2018

James Erwin concludes:

How long will it be until a candidate finds herself effectively disqualified over a 10 percent chance of one disease or a 20 percent chance of another? An older candidate might assert that younger opponents had a greater chance of Alzheimer’s. A candidate might demand his opponent test her children’s DNA after rumors of infidelity “so we can all move on.” And another candidate might find themselves under pressure to share their DNA to verify heritage—even though the use of genetic testing for this purpose is extremely limited. Our reductive, even primitive understanding of how our genes relate to racial identity and health has produced yet another hurdle for future presidential candidates to leap (or find another way around). While it may not happen in 2020 or even 2024, it is not that far a step from the results Warren has released to the day when a candidate’s full genome is posted for review.

A power revealed soon becomes a power abused. Until Monday, Trump’s bluster was just bluster. Warren deflected his attacks, and similar attacks from her 2012 opponent Scott Brown, with relative ease. But now she has set a precedent. The “mismeasure of man” has never been prevented by new tests; it has only been shunted down new paths. We will live to see qualified candidates driven from politics over small potential flaws uncovered in their genetic makeup. We will see our nation retreat further from rational discourse, as objective proof is futilely offered and then sacrificed as “junk science” in the name of political skirmishing. President Trump will not be the last bully to demand the right to rummage through an opponent’s DNA. We must hope that Warren will be the last for a long time to allow it.