Chris Myers Asch grew up in D.C. His mother still lives there. He now lives in Maine and he urges his senators in Maine to support statehood for D.C. In this column, published in the Maine Press Herald, he explains why the District should gain statehood and why the residents of the District should have the right to vote. Asch teaches at Colby College and is the author of Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capitol.
He writes:
My mom is an amazing American. The only child of a Census Bureau statistician and a Jewish social scientist (who fled her native Germany because of the Nazis), she was born and raised in the nation’s capital. She had two children while attending medical school and another (me!) in Laos, where she practiced medicine as my father served in Vietnam. She worked in pediatrics and later in a drug clinic, then spent the last 15 years of her career caring for veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. She has lived an extraordinary life of service.
But she can’t vote.
My mom and over 700,000 American citizens – 32,000 of whom are veterans – have no voting representatives or senators in Congress because they happen to live in Washington, D.C. That’s right. The people who reside in the capital of the world’s foremost democracy do not actually get to participate fully in that democracy. They can vote for president, but in Congress all they have are a “Non-Voting Delegate” and a “Shadow Senator,” neither of whom has full voting rights...
The power to create new states rests entirely with Congress. Last summer, with support from Reps. Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden, the House of Representatives voted 232-180 to turn D.C. into a state, the first D.C. statehood bill ever to pass a house of Congress. The bill is scheduled to be introduced in the Senate on Friday, and we need both Sens. Angus King and Susan Collins to get on board as well.
Some critics say D.C. is too small too have statehood, but it has a larger population than Maine or Wyoming. Furthermore, the people of D.C. pay more taxes than the people of 22 states.
It is time. The District of Columbia should become a state, with representation in Congress.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Yes, obviously, both DC and PR should be States, the we could finally say we’re playing with a full deck again — but first we need to discard that Joker.
The deck is full of jokers.
I think we need a brand new deck.
Max Planck once said that “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it”
I think the same is true about political truth.
Jokers like fake Democrat Manchin.
Well, I was talking about the States themselves, not their representatives.
Manchin looks like he walked right out of Night of the Living Dead.
If I am not mistaken, Manchin is the one on the left in this still shot from Night of the Living Dead
https://images.app.goo.gl/kChEZZQqLHVLutNPA
You say Manchin,
I say Mnuchin
Manchin? Mnuchin
Let’s call the whole thing “Republican”
So, which state is the joker that should be discarded?
Florida?
Texas?
Virginia?
Utah?
Arizona?
Wyoming?
This issue underlines the rural-urban divide, a divide that is cultivated more than soil itself in modern America.
Rural people see DC as the epitome of urban pluralism run rampant, generally because their news sources emphasize the divide. The narrative is that the crazy people in the city are making laws that do not make any sense to us law-abiding country folk. The narrative draws on American tendency to exalt the rustic and his natural goodness. It is an extension of the European narrative of the goodness of the ploughman, the man close to his land.
But this is mythology. Like other ideals, rural people are no more filled with goodness than are their urban brothers and sisters. There are just as many wonderful people in cities as there are in the country. Unfortunately, the nightly news leads people to see it differently. Bleeds and leads stories of urban murders play into the false narrative of oppositional people crowded into dysfunctional cities. Country folk see these stories on the local news, and they feel vindicated in their suspicions of the city.
So political leaders who want to get elected in the country find that planting suspicion in the mind of folks out here in the country is a way to keep power. There is a fear, perhaps a realistic fear, that the urban majority will come to dominate the rural minority. This fear is exaggerated by fears (stoked by leaders of late) of the multi-ethnic pluralism that make American cities work as well as they do.
This is complicated by the hinterlands of cities (think metro areas), which are actually urban, but perceive themselves as living in the country. They often vote with the rural people, but not always.
All this is to suggest that there is hardly a chance of our flag gaining any new design in the near future. I am one of the very few rural people I ever met who is troubled by the lack of representation given to the 700,000 people who live in our nation’s capital. The colonists who voiced their displeasure at King George were far better represented than are the .7 million denizens of DC. But do not expect the states to grant this extension of representation to them.
Some might argue that DC is actually OVERrepresented, but those being represented (lobbyists and corporations) don’t actually live there.
There is no reason for DC not to be a state. Sure, DC has a small population but there are two states that have smaller populations and they are Vermont and Wyoming. Alaska and North Dakota have larger populations but not by much.
But, here’s the rub, DC is heavily Democratic when it comes to voting so the GOP will fight tooth-and-nail to stop DC from becoming a state that would add two more Democratic Senators and one representative to the House making it more challenging for GOP controlled states to manipulate elections through extreme gerrymandering and/or closing voting locations in heavily democratic regions.
“Partisan Gerrymandering and Minority RuleIn a surprisingly large number of U.S. states, minority rule occurs. Minority rule is defined as the party with the minority of votes in the most recent election nevertheless controlling the majority of seats in the state legislature subsequent to that election. In minority rule states, the state legislative popular vote does not match the partisan control of the state legislative chamber.”
Click to access 7f88292d-d6df-4f1c-9f0c-5f52e9d61a9e.pdf
“WASHINGTON (Reuters) – States across the American South have closed nearly 1,200 polling places since the Supreme Court weakened a landmark voting-discrimination law in 2013, according to a report released by a civil-rights group on Tuesday.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-locations/southern-u-s-states-have-closed-1200-polling-places-in-recent-years-rights-group-idUSKCN1VV09J
Maybe they could just make the residents citizens of Vermont.
As you know, California sends the most money to the federal government, and it is the most populous state. Yet, it has two senators just like Wyoming.
Lloyd nails it.
And that goes double for Puerto Rico, (2 more Blue Senators).
More than half the Commonwealth just voted in favor of statehood. U.S. has kept the island in financial ruin. Forget about Trump’s sadistic neglect during the hurricane.
Why the hell doesn’t the Biden administration run this right through the hearts of the minority Republicans. Seems like justice demands that granting statehood should be an immediate (first 100-day) priority. Or do the Dems get benefit from keeping Puerto Ricans down? Everything comes down to self-interest.
And if California had the same per capita Senators, and thus proportional power in the Senate to it’s population as Wyoming, it should have 135 Senators….instead of 2.
If that isn’t a big structural problem, I don’t know what is.
135 Diane Feinsteins would always be a possibility.
There’s a mental picture. Strom Thurmond turned 100 while serving, so she’s a spring chicken.