Why DC doesn't have the vote

The BBQ Pit
41

[QUOTE=madmonk28]
Complete ignorance on your part. DC is one of the hottest real estate markets in the nation with one of the highest education levels in the nation.

I live in DC …
[/QUOTE]
I’m simply stunned that you do not agree that there are high rates of poverty in DC. I mean… seriously. Have you ever driven around Northeast DC? Or Southeast? Has the wealth of Dupont, Capitol Hill, and Cleveland Park completely blinded you to the stifling poverty that afflicts large swaths of this city? For what it’s worth, DC’s poverty rate is pretty much in line with states like West Virginia and Louisiana. Cite.

If someone regards the law as something that cannot be changed, or the Constitution to be a work of unquestionable perfection, you might have a point.

Let’s set aside the text of the Constitution for a moment. I hope you would acknowledge that voting and fair representation are principles of human rights that deserve recognition regardless of where lines happen to be drawn arbitrarily on a map. Were we to discuss Jim Crow laws in the South, nobody could reasonably argue that black people simply ought not live in the South. It’s a petty and irrelevent argument to a question of fundamental liberties. The basic guarantees of a free society ought to apply regardless of where one chooses to live, shouldn’t it? There is a universal principle at stake: do all law-abiding Americans deserve fair representation in the Federal government?

I understand there is a lot of reverence for the Constitution. It is an inspired document that serves us well. But the idea that a fundamental human liberty (or at least a fundamental American principle) of fair representation in one’s government is contingent on where one chooses to live seems an absurdity. I’ll say it straight-up: the Framers were simply wrong in believing that local government can hold excessive sway over national matters. Is Parliament held hostage to the whims of the Lord Mayor of London? Do the mayors of Paris’ arrondissements hold their Senate by the short and curlies? However has our neighbor to the North survived lo these many years when – gasp – the people of Ottawa can exercise sufferage just like any other Canadian?

Preventing DC residents from having an elected representative in Congress in order to protect the Republic is a constitutional defense mechanism that makes no sense. It’s a solution for a problem that simply does not exist.

42

[QUOTE=madmonk28]
I live in DC and I think that the resistance of voting rights from the rest of the country can be boiled down to fear of black people. One hundred years from now, people will still bring up the crazy negro mayor on crack as a reason not to let us vote.
[/QUOTE]

Oh, gee, how did I know that someone was going to pull out race? Pathetic.

And as for the “crazy negro mayor on crack”, guess what he’s doing now? He’s the City Councilman from Ward 8. Thus proving that Marion Barry isn’t the only one on crack. Oh, yeah, the bitch set him up. I forgot.

43

[QUOTE=madmonk28]
Complete ignorance on your part. DC is one of the hottest real estate markets in the nation with one of the highest education levels in the nation.
[/QUOTE]

Oh, yeah, you just can’t touch those studio lofts in Anacostia…

44

[QUOTE=col_10022]
We have about as much congressional representation as Peurto Rico or Guam without the benefit of not paying US taxes.
[/QUOTE]

Just to correct a misstatement in the OP – while DC may have the same representation in the hallowed halls of Congress as Puerto Rico or Guam, residents of DC and Puerto Rico share a right that is denied to the residents of Guam, namely, nonvoting representation, the residents of Guam are denied a vote for president, as I hear regularly from my husband, who lived in Guam for eleven years. As a lifetime U.S. citizen from Minnesota, he was seriously displeased to find he was effectively disenfranchised when he ended up in Guam.

45

Gah. Note to self: Preview is your friend.

Make that:

46

[QUOTE=Mama Tiger]
Just to correct a misstatement in the OP – while DC may have the same representation in the hallowed halls of Congress as Puerto Rico or Guam, namely, nonvoting representation, residents of DC and Puerto Rico share a right that is denied to the residents of Guam, the residents of Guam are denied a vote for president…
[/quote]
You’re still wrong. Puerto Rico doesn’t vote for president.

To correct a misapprehension running through this thread: statehood for DC doesn’t require a constitutional amendment. It could be done by law. Allowing DC to remain a district and gain voting representation in Congress would require a constitutional amendment, which Congress proposed in 1978 but which was not ratified.

The District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa all have delegates to the House of Representatives, who vote in committee but not on the floor. No territory has any representation at all in the Senate.

47

This proposed law would be a relatively fair compromise. This would give DC voters a voting representative in the House.

I can accept this compromise.

[QUOTE=Ravenman]
I mean… seriously. Have you ever driven around Northeast DC? Or Southeast? Has the wealth of Dupont, Capitol Hill, and Cleveland Park completely blinded you to the stifling poverty that afflicts large swaths of this city?
[/QUOTE]

Are those parts of the City really all that bad? They don’t really compare to third world poverty. Also from what I recall from another thread, Madmonk28 lives in Petworth which while nice isn’t Dupont, Capitol Hill, and Cleveland Park.

[QUOTE=Airman Doors, USAF]
And as for the “crazy negro mayor on crack”, guess what he’s doing now? He’s the City Councilman from Ward 8. Thus proving that Marion Barry isn’t the only one on crack. Oh, yeah, the bitch set him up. I forgot.
[/QUOTE]

From what I understand, he has been somewhat effective as an councilman in getting things done for his Ward. He has had some controversy recently, but considering how disenfranchised the residents of Ward 8 are and how they have been ignored and largely bypassed by the recent boom that the City experienced, I’m not surprised that they voted for him.

DC has become a lot more affluent than it used to be, and if the population trends continue going the way that they have been going, the City may turn around. I don’t think that Marion Barry could get elected Mayor in DC today. It is still frustrating dealing with the City government for a lot of things, but things have gotten better. My last experience with the tax office was OK. Going to the DMV and getting my car inspected were more painful than they would have been in VA, but not as bad as it used to be from what my neighbors tell me.

48

[QUOTE=Freddy the Pig]
…To correct a misapprehension running through this thread: statehood for DC doesn’t require a constitutional amendment. It could be done by law. …
[/QUOTE]

No, but if DC becomes a state, then some state will have to cede a district not exceeding twn miles square to be the federal capital, and we’ll have to move everything.

49

[QUOTE=scotandrsn]
No, but if DC becomes a state, then some state will have to cede a district not exceeding twn miles square to be the federal capital, and we’ll have to move everything.
[/QUOTE]

No. As has already been pointed out, the Constitution permits, but does not require, a federal capital district under the control of Congress. And even if this was correct, it would be simple enough to restrict the federal district to the Mall and adjacent areas and allow the rest of DC to become a state.

50

[QUOTE=Freddy the Pig]
You’re still wrong. Puerto Rico doesn’t vote for president.
[/QUOTE]

Ah, bad me. I looked up the rules for Guam to provide a citation, but didn’t check for Puerto Rico since I don’t hear about that on a regular basis from my resentful husband.

51

[QUOTE=Loopydude]
Oh, yeah, you just can’t touch those studio lofts in Anacostia…
[/QUOTE]

So what part of Northern VA do you live in?

There is a huge project to renovate Anacostia. A large chunk of land was recently turned over from the Coast Guard to the City. With the new Baseball stadium going in, the southern half of the city promises to turn around.

Pray tell, what utopian society do you live in where there is no crime and no poor people? I’m picturing fatlings driving in their SUV from strip mall to strip mall looking for the perfect Olive Garden for their exotic repast and then on to Walmart for some tasteful polyester to cover their bulging guts.

And Barry was elected by the residents of ward 8, just like Bush was elected by the Jesus freaks, we both have to deal with those facts.

52

[QUOTE=DanBlather]
Actually, DC has a higher per-capita income than any of the states.
[/QUOTE]

That’s true - but it also has a 17.5% poverty rate. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/11000.html

The problem is that per-capita measures of income are averages. DC has a lot of very, very prosperous people - lawyers, staffers, lobbyists, academics, and so forth. These people do splendidly, and they pump up DC’s per-capita figures. The large number of people living in poverty isn’t sufficient to drive down the average income level to a point where it looks that alarming.

This is why, as I recall from college econ classes, a lot of economists are not that thrilled by increases in per capita GDP in developing countries. You can get a huge increase by creating a small class of very wealthy people, while leaving the bulk of the population dirt-poor. The solution is to look at the Gini coefficient - a statistical tool for analyzing how much of a polity’s wealth goes to the wealthiest, least wealthy, and so on. (Gini coefficient - Wikipedia).

53

[QUOTE=Caffeine.addict]
Are those parts of the City really all that bad? They don’t really compare to third world poverty. Also from what I recall from another thread, Madmonk28 lives in Petworth which while nice isn’t Dupont, Capitol Hill, and Cleveland Park.
[/QUOTE]
I live in Brookland. A nice part of it. But go down 4th Street a mile or two – just around the Home Depot area – and there’s a sizable swath of the city that I assure you nobody wants to live in because of the crime and poverty. On Capitol Hill, take a walk around the area south of the Southeast freeway. Two years ago, I took a tour of a burnt-out crackhouse selling for $280,000. Go to Anacostia and drive around Minnesota Avenue. It’s just pathetic.

I’ve seen the amazing changes in the city over the last decade or so, but the idea that high-priced condos for our transient white collar workforce has done anything real to eliminate poverty in this city is just pure fantasy. If anything, it really has segregated the city even more. Like, how many residents of DC don’t seem to realize that there is poverty in the city anymore.

And by the way, the poverty of the Third World has nothing to do with poverty in America. I’ve lived in a couple and visited plenty of underdeveloped countries – eh, maybe 20 or so – and just because the slums of Cairo or the shanties of Northern Laos are awful doesn’t make a good excuse for the poverty that afflicts many parts of this rich country.

54

[QUOTE=Ravenman]

I’ve seen the amazing changes in the city over the last decade or so, but the idea that high-priced condos for our transient white collar workforce has done anything real to eliminate poverty in this city is just pure fantasy. If anything, it really has segregated the city even more. Like, how many residents of DC don’t seem to realize that there is poverty in the city anymore.

[/QUOTE]

(Bolding added)

There’s real truth to that - I’m a student at American University’s Washington College of Law (in Spring Valley), and I live in Van Ness. When I walk to school, I really just don’t see any poverty. Leafy residential neighborhoods, and a bit of Wisconsin, and that’s it. You don’t think of DC looking like this, and once you’ve lived in this part of the city for a while, it really is something of a shock even to visit the Hill, and see all the homeless people.

55

[QUOTE=madmonk28]
So what part of Northern VA do you live in?
[/QUOTE]

I don’t and never did. I lived in Dupont Circle the entire time I was a resident of DC, and anyone without his head way up his arse knows you can’t extrapolate from the posh and hip neighborhoods of N.W. to the whole city.

Promises that such-and-such neighborhood would “turn around” come true when the economics demand it. Neighborhoods get gentrified to the extent that other neighborhoods become prohibitively expensive to live in, same as any other city, and it usually has little to do with ballparks or land swaps. With the houseing market headed into a downswing, I wouldn’t hold my breath for any “reclamations” (i.e. “reversals of white flight”) in D.C., Baltimore, Philly, anywhere, really.

On the subject of race: It is the poison well that all D.C. politicians, and their critics in the Fed. Govt. and elsewhere, draw from. I mostly agree with madmonk on the subject of Suburban Fear of Blackness, and to deny its importance is to have a cranial-rectal inversion as well.

An individual DC story about race, and the first time, coming from Maine, I really had to deal with it in a personal way: My first landlord in DC, a very respectable Jewish man from Potomac, asked to me allow a few prosepective tenants in to check the place out during the last month of my lease (I was moving into a bigger place). After I’d given four or five people “the grand tour”, he called me, told me how great I was, how sorry he was to be losing me as a tenant, etc., then his tone changed abrubtly. “Hey, can I ask you something?” “Uh, sure…” I instantly felt uncomfortable. “Was the guy you saw yesterday black?” I was so taken aback I didn’t know what to say. So I lied. I said I couldn’t tell. “You what? <chuckle> Isn’t it kind of…obvious?” “Uh, he looked kind of in-between.” I felt like an idiot. My landlord laughed again, thanked me, and that was that. I probably should have reported him, but didn’t even know what to do. I mentioned it to someone at work, and she just shook her head. “My landlord did the same thing,” was her reply.

56

[QUOTE=Lemur866]
Offer to give the residential areas of DC back to Maryland and they’ll just mumble. Which tells me that DC statehood isn’t about enfranchising people in the nation’s capitol, it’s about getting more Democrats into congress.
[/QUOTE]

Does not compute. Sure, those that support D.C. statehood tend to be Democrats, but that has nothing to do with the opposition to retrocession. First, if the District were retroceded, it’d be nonetheless a safe blue seat in the House, and would make Maryland’s Senate seats safe blue seats – unlike in reality, where Ben Cardin and Michael Steele are in a serious race this year (Democrat Cardin is the odds-on favorite, but by no means a lock.) So while retrocession wouldn’t add quite as many Dems to Congress as D.C. statehood, it’d still be a net positive for Dems in the Capitol. Ergo, your argument doesn’t hold water, because your alternative proposal wouldn’t actually change things that much.

The real reason District residents want statehood over retrocession is that they’re not Maryland residents, anymore than (to revisit an analogy), Delaware residents aren’t interested in becoming part of New Jersey, and Louisianans aren’t interested in becoming part of Texas. They identify as citizens of the District, not either of the neighboring states.

I’m not convinced D.C. could be given full representation without a Constitutional Amendment, but I’m in the minority on this (amongst people who know what they’re talking about, anyway). Certainly there is no constitutional deficiency in actually making D.C. a state, as has been explained upthread – the Constitution permits Congress to create a federal enclave; it does not demand one. As to the policy argument of not having the center of the federal government located within a state so as to avoid giving that state too much power over the federal government, let’s just say it’s not 1789 anymore. Back then, people tended to think of themselves as residents of their states first, the U.S. second. That’s exceedingly rare today. Moreover, anyone who thinks this would be a problem should read up on the actual relationship that exists between the federal and District government today – they’re anything but cozy. There’s no reason to think that would change if D.C. becomes a state; indeed, there’s reason to think it’d be the other way around, because D.C. could finally stop shuckin’ and jivin’.

Bottom line, the fact that a city of a half-million American citizens doesn’t have the same political power as we were all taught in first grade is our birthright as Americans, and this isn’t some weird frontier outpost but situated smack-dab in the middle of the country’s biggest population region, is just astounding. Add in the simple fact that 60% of that city is black, and it becomes less astounding.

–Cliffy

57

[QUOTE=Caffeine.addict
Are those parts of the City really all that bad? They don’t really compare to third world poverty. Also from what I recall from another thread, Madmonk28 lives in Petworth which while nice isn’t Dupont, Capitol Hill, and Cleveland Park. [/QUOTE]

Actually my house is in Petworth and my wife is in Petworth, but I have the great pleasure of living in Baghdad (let’s hope I get to continue ‘living’ here).

I am so sick of people bringing up Barry as a reason not to give DC the vote. He was elected, he got arrested, he then got elected by Ward 8. No one suggests he wasn’t fairly elected.

To disenfranchise DC because you don’t like they way they vote is ridiculous. Essentially, people are saying that the blacks of DC can’t be trusted with the vote. I am sick of hearing people from VA, who elected George Allen, of all people, cricizing how DC votes. You know what, you don’t like our politics? Stay the hell out of our city. Spend all your time in the cultural Mecca that is the Pentagon City Mall.

58

[QUOTE=Airman Doors, USAF]
Sure, but there are a plethora of people willing to do such things that are willing to surrender representation to do so. If one is unwilling to do so they can get the same job elsewhere and have their representation. Someone who doesn’t care (comprising approximately 50% of the eligible voting public at any given time) will step right in and fill that spot.
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, and I’m one of those people. There’s no reason I couldn’t live in Maryland, but I like living where I do, I don’t like to drive, and I like an urban lifestyle. It’s not like having no vote for any congressman is really a source of great agony for me. It’s a trade I’m clearly willing to make. And I am well aware that DC isn’t going to get congressional representation anytime soon.

My point is just that there’s no reason for DC residents not to have congressional representation. It’s just an accident of history, an injustice that could easily be corrected. As far as injustices go, it’s pretty small compared to slavery or segregation, but it is an injustice, and one that should be rectified.

That’s why the train analogy doesn’t work. We need trains and their tracks have to be laid somewhere. There’s no necessary reason to deny DC voting rights. The only reason they are is because the Republicans don’t want the Democrats to gain more power.

And race certainly plays a part in this. DC is 2/3 black. It’s well known that Blacks, even socially conservative blacks, vote heavily democratic, and that it will be a long time before the Republicans can swing a significant percentage of those votes to their party. So the fewer black votes in America, the better the Republicans do.

59

[QUOTE=Airman Doors, USAF]
Oh, gee, how did I know that someone was going to pull out race? Pathetic.
[/QUOTE]

Not as pathetic as you trying to dissolve a racial argement based on…what? The concept of “the race card” and that it’s supposed to be distasteful?

And? Talk about missing the point. You’re making his argument for him.

60

[QUOTE=madmonk28]
You know what, you don’t like our politics? Stay the hell out of our city. Spend all your time in the cultural Mecca that is the Pentagon City Mall.
[/QUOTE]

/Hijack/ Pentagon City has a lot of DC residents. They also have a Costco. For the true Nova suburbanite, go to Tyson’s Corner. /end hijack/

Besides, if we disenfranchise voters for voting for bad politicians, will we have any states with voting rights?