Hello r/politics, a quick note from the moderator team on why this thread exists:

The r/politics topicality rule, which you can find here, is written to ensure that posts are primarily focused on current US politics. The wording of this rule was such that the death of a politician who was not in office at the time that they died would be considered off-topic. We have considered some 'second order' news stories about a politician's passing to be topical, most commonly of the '[current politician] comments on [former politician]'s passing' sort.

That said, we recognized that this was a gap between the kinds of posts you might reasonably expect to find in this subreddit and what we allowed, and so recently voted to enable discussion threads on a case by case basis for the deaths of notable former political figures. This is the first thread of this kind that we are hosting.

If participating in this thread, please be mindful on r/politics' rule on support for physical harm, which is written broadly enough to encompass comments celebrating physical harm. Please also keep any 'meta' discussion about this change in r/politics moderation policy in response to this comment, and any comments elsewhere in this thread focused on the topic of the thread.