click here to return to the Calico Cat homepage

Marion Barry for Senate? No thanks

Last week, Andrew Sullivan blogged about representation for DC, and he briefly mentioned Marion Barry but I don’t understand what the point was. Then James from why.i.hate.dc mentions the post and he gets mad that Sullivan brought up Marion Barry. James is a strong supporter of statehood for DC.

I’ve previously written about statehood for Washington, DC, and if you read that post, you’ll see that Marion Barry is part of the reason why I oppose statehood for DC.

Simply stated again, Marion Barry is the type of politician that DC voters elect, so statehood for DC means two Marion Barry clones in the Senate and one in the House.

I have a much better idea for fixing the problem of lack of representation for DC. Give DC back to Maryland. But fixing the lack of representation isn’t what pro-DC statehood people really want. They want three more left wing Democrats in Congress.

If we want to add a new state to the Union, it would make much more sense to split California into North California and South California. If we managed to split California evenly, each of the two new states would have more than 31 times the population of DC. And the two new states would be tied for third largest behind Texas and New York. (US Census 2003 annual population estimates)

posted Sunday, July 04, 2004

3 Comments:

By James F:

I'm not necessarily pro-statehood for D.C., just pro-representation. (Although, to be fair, if D.C. were a state, it would be comparable in size to the 6-7 smallest states.)

Claiming that "they might elect all Marion Barry clones" is not a good reason to keep D.C. disenfranchised; all Americans should have the right to vote idiots into office (and we clearly exercise that right OFTEN). Other countries with national legislatures somehow manage to represent the citizens of their capitals without falling into the sea.

The fact that D.C. has been unrepresented for 200 years reveals an ugly partisanship at best and racism at worst. It's sad that we're willing to spend $180 million to install a democracy in Iraq, but won't extend the same rights to these 600,000 citizens.

posted at 7/04/2004 12:59 AM

By James F:

Sorry, make that billion of course.

posted at 7/04/2004 1:03 AM

By Coffee:

Mostly, I agree-- the ultimate solution for DC will be retrocession of almost the entire district back to Maryland, just like how the part of DC originally allocated on the other side of the Potomac was retrocessed back to Virginia. That solves DC's representation, state funding, and House-of-representatives "pork" issues in one full swoop.

However, if we're going to claim that a polity does not deserve statehood, then that opens a whole can of worms. Why not merge VT and NH (VT is small, and no point to having them both)? Get rid of Wyoming and divide it up between Idaho, Utah, Colorado, and Montana (after all, it's sparsely populated, mostly a bunch of federal parks, and always elects republicans). West Virginia is just a relic of a secession-from-a-secession during the Civil War, so that might as well be merged back into Virginia. And don't even get me started on Delaware (wow, this could end up being a bonanza for Maryland).

posted at 7/05/2004 11:43 PM