History nerd correction: it was Alexandria County, T.C. (Territory of Columbia) at the time. Arlington and DC were both names created later.
The political balance factor is the more proximate cause for it not passing. But since the passage of the 17th Amendment taking the election of the Senate away from the state legislatures and handing it to the popular vote, I believe there would be no federalist inconsistency in constitutionally giving the people of the District their equivalent representation while maintaining its government’s status as a federal dependency.
Wouldn’t this be the case no matter what the border was? I mean, let’s craft a border using any measurement whatsoever or throw a dart at the map and say, “That’s the border.”
Aren’t we always going to have people on one side of that imaginary line sharing many things in common with those on the other side?
Take West Virginia, for example. The northern and north-central parts of the state almost invariably identify with Pittsburgh and its culture. (Although we don’t talk like them. 
) We are fans of the Pittsburgh professional sports teams (not Pitt) and eat pepperoni rolls and Primanti Brothers sandwiches.
The western part of the state identifies with Ohio. They are Reds and Bengals fans and identify with Columbus as their major city.
The eastern part of the state are Oriole and Redskin fans and many commute to D.C. or Baltimore daily.
The southern part of the state identifies with the rest of Appalachia in Kentucky.
On the other hand, the history, traditions, and even the current culture suggest a strong identity as West Virginia.
It would not be unreasonable to say that the entire state should be subsumed into each respective state. It would not also be unreasonable for portions of those other states to be subsumed into West Virginia (for that cultural uniqueness). We could come up with dozens of other ways to do it, or keep it the way it is. All of these solutions, however, would create many “problems.”
In short, there is nothing inherently wrong with using the rivers as state boundaries or having Kansas City in two states. The “solution” to those issues would create many more of the same “problems.”
As relevant to the thread, D.C. shares a lot of the same attributes. The residents identify with Maryland and Virginia, but also share a common pride with the District itself. However, a pressing problem continues in that over 600,000 people have no representation in Congress.
The reason I am personally opposed to outright D.C. statehood is the fact that the framers never intended the District to be a residential area. It was to be an enclave for the government and the people who resided there would only do so while needed for their duties and at those other times return to their home states.
This idea was almost immediately shown to be false, and they corrected this by retroceding the Virginia portion back to that state. I see no reason why they should not do the same for Maryland, and keep the idea of this federal enclave to what was intended.
If we make D.C. a state, then we have a situation where a state has control over the seat of the national government. If we do that, then there was no reason for D.C. to begin with.
Further, a retrocession to Maryland would not rob the inhabitants of their unique pride in being District residents. If Pittsburgh was given to West Virginia, would those inhabitants not still be able to have their own culture, individuality, and be proud of Pittsburgh, its sports teams, its steel mills, and so forth? Yes, they would be denied the sort of pride as being Pennsylvanians, but there is no analogy of that to the current inhabitants of D.C.
I think it is wrong that District residents are not represented, but I think the state solution is too much and a far easier method is available.
Actual statehood proposals that I’ve seen, like Muriel Bowser’s current one, include a tiny remnant federal district comprising the Capitol, the White House, the Mall, and the various dedicated federal offices immediately adjacent to these–but zero permanent residences. Such a seat of federal government would be virtually surrounded (apart from the water border with Virginia) by the new state, but that’s the case with the District and Maryland now.
Well, yes, I think it’s perfectly clear that the Framers found a solution in search of a problem, and I see no problem whatsoever correcting one of their errors. There’s been scores of silly ideas that the Framers had that were once thought to be VERY IMPORTANT. Having inauguration of a President occur four and a half months after an election. Not having senators subject to election. The whole Third Amendment. Some of these have been changed over time, and our Republic is all in all probably better. A few (like the Third Amendment) are now primarily relevant only as trivia.
Holding to what the Founders decided when it’s clear that there is no underlying justification for something is quite simply an error. and it ought to be corrected.
And my recollection is that when that bit of the Federal district was retrocesded to Virginia, almost nobody lived there. And Virginia asked for it several times. And the few people who lived there wanted to be Virginians. None of that is the case today with respect to DC and Maryland.
As far as a state having control over a capital - so what? Does the mayor of London “control” the Royal Family and Parliament? Do Parisians dictate national laws to their assembly? This is an imaginary problem.
I still think it’s too ugly a solution to give one territory the benefits of statehood without the rest of the benefits, or responsibilities.
The problem was very real at the time.
Congress (the one predating the Constitution) had to flee Philadelphia when rioters wanting back pay for the Revolutionary war threatened to storm the building - and Pennsylvania, which sympathized with the rioters, did nothing to stop them. They needed a neutral territory.
So because the state government did nothing to help, they needed to move to a location where there would be no state government to do anything to help?
Yeah, it’s a great example of learning the exact wrong lesson from something. If the Federal government was concerned about its security, one would think that establishing various police forces (i.e., the Secret Service, the Capitol Police, etc) and military forces (i.e., the DC National Guard which can be federalized) as opposed to thinking that a disenfranchised population would be the way to go.
But it doesn’t seem like the Founding Fathers were too worried about this issue in practicalities. It wasn’t until 1861 that a formalized police force was established in DC.
Canada seems to have gotten along well with tiny Prince Edward Island as a full Province on equal standing with its ginormous neighbors. If Canada ever falls apart and the provinces request US statehood, we could make PEI join up with DC to form a larger, more bizarre, and oddly noncontiguous state of crack-smoking mayors and fiddling Scotsmen. I know, we’ll call it the Island and District of What The Hell Were You Smoking When You Came Up With This, Eh?
And why wouldn’t the State of Columbia have those?
In fact, most U.S. states in their present configurations are too small to be efficient and too large to be democratic.
Let’s look at the problem the other way around:
What would it take (politically; I know there’s no way around securing their consent constitutionally) to get Virginia and Maryland to let go of the counties of the Washington Metropolitan Area and cede them to the new State of Columbia?
There’s gotta be something.
I was talking about the idea of giving DC representation in Congress without making it a state.
No, they wanted a territory where the federal government would be supreme and could help itself, with no state government in conflict with it.
Yes. It obviously ocurred to them that if that time around the host state sat on its hands and would not protect the Congress, then what would prevent it in some future incident from actually acting against them or even from refusing to provide regular basic services and support to oppose some federal act.
Yes. The mistake they made is putting the capital in the South instead of closer to neutral territory. They nearly lost it to the Confederacy after Lincoln was elected. Lincoln had to essentially sneak through Maryland, a slave state with strong southern sympathies, to get to DC for his inauguration, and then strongarm Maryland into not seceding.
And what other “benefits” or “responsibilities” are there? Self-government? Congress could grant DC that without granting it statehood or representation.
You can’t think of the benefits and responsibilities of being a sovereign, self-governing state vs. a dependent territory?
Someone refresh my memory, didn’t we fight a war once about something taxation something representation? Though I suppose people in DC may pay no taxes, I’ve never lived there so I don’t know.