The Case for D.C. Statehood Should Be Made on Principled Grounds
Also: A 51-star flag wouldn’t look weird.
Jonathan Chait has done a great job chronicling the very-stupid arguments Republicans are making against D.C. statehood. Even by the standards of the Republican Party -- which is to reasoned logic what the woolly mammoth was to basketball -- these arguments are very dumb. Representative Jody Hice argued against D.C. statehood by saying “it would be the only state without an airport, without a car dealership, without a capitol city, without a landfill.” Tom Cotton made a similar case, stating that D.C.’s lack of timber production should be a factor arguing against statehood. It’s hard for me to make a joke here because the Republican arguments are joke arguments; normally, the comedic trick would be to “heighten” and make hyperbolically-cartoonish arguments, like “you can’t be a state because you produce very little talc and only have three Dairy Queens!” But the joke arguments aren’t any dumber than the actual arguments. Republicans are literally beyond parody.
I’d like to take a quick second to address an anti-D.C. statehood argument that I think is an unspoken part of this debate. If anyone cares (and I suspect that they do): The flag wouldn’t look weird. I think that when some people imagine a 51-star flag, they picture something like this:
And if we also add Puerto Rico,1 maybe something like this:
But the flag would look fine. There wouldn’t be one freakishly long row, or some Betsy Ross unbalanced-visual-weight bullshit (this is the only Substack with the balls to call Betsy Ross a hack). It would still be the flag that all of us know: 13 stripes to represent the 13 Lassies, with an evenly-balanced collection of stars upon a field of blue to represent Frank Sinatra’s dreamy blue eyes. See:
The argument for D.C. statehood is pretty simple: Residents of D.C. are Americans in every possible way. They pay federal taxes, they can get drafted, and they send their Ninja Warriors to shirtlessly compete on NBC to the delight of moms everywhere. Yet they lack the self-governance and congressional representation that people in every other part of the country enjoy. Any serious argument as to what the threshold for statehood should be -- arguments about size or geographic continuity -- don’t apply, because D.C. has more people than Wyoming and is obviously contiguous. No compromise that’s been floated seems at all satisfactory; D.C., like the rest of the country, does not want to be part of Maryland, and Maryland doesn’t want to incorporate D.C. To me, the argument for statehood seems unassailable: D.C. deserves representation because all Americans deserve representation, full stop.
The real reason why Republicans oppose D.C. statehood is obvious: They don’t want two more Democratic senators. They openly say this when they’re not rambling about timber production or car dealerships:
President Trump: “You mean District of Columbia, a state? Why? So we can have two more Democratic — Democrat senators and five more congressmen?”2
Mitch McConnell: “They plan to make the District of Columbia a state - that’d give them two new Democratic senators - Puerto Rico a state, that would give them two more new Democratic senators.”
John Kasich: “What it really gets down to, if you want to be honest, is because [Republicans] know that’s just more votes in the Democratic party.
Ron Johnson: “This seems like just a naked power grab.”
Lindsay Graham: "This is about expanding the Senate map to accommodate the most radical agenda that I've ever seen since I've been up here."
This is the real Republican argument: “This isn’t about democracy, it’s about partisanship.” It shifts the argument off of principled grounds -- where Republicans have no case -- and makes D.C. statehood seem like part of the red team/blue team power struggle that most people don’t care about. Republicans pull the same trick on voting access (Rep. James Comer: “Democrats believe that all-mail voting will boost the political chances of Democratic presidential nominee...”) and even immigration (Tucker Carlson: “I have less political power because they’re importing a brand new electorate”). It’s a cynical strategy, but it works; I understand why they’re doing it. What I don’t understand is why any liberal would engage the debate on these grounds.
You don’t often find liberals making the “I want more Senate votes” argument; it’s much more common to encounter blue-check liberals making the principled case. But occasionally -- usually in a fit of Amy Coney Barrett or Joe Manchin-inspired rage -- liberals will get their dander up and talk about adding states in terms of what it would do to advance the progressive agenda. Here’s Neil Sroka, communications director for the left-leaning PAC Democracy for America, doing that. Here’s Kimberly Wehle doing it in an op-ed for The Hill. And here’s David Faris, author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics, talking about statehood in an interview with Vox:
“To me, it’s just unquestionably the right thing to do. We should grant people the representation they want and deserve, and it just happens that doing so would almost certainly send four more Democrats into the Senate, and probably an all-Democratic congressional delegation from Puerto Rico too.”
Faris’ framing is typical: He makes it clear that D.C. should become a state for principled reasons, then addresses the strategic argument in an “oh by the way” manner (“it just happens that doing so…”). And, on one hand, I get that: Analysts gonna analyze, and I don’t imagine that Democratic Party message discipline could or should extend to all parts of the media landscape. Still: I’d prefer to never hear this argument ever. And not just because it’s a net-negative talking point that seems to validate the Republican case (though it is that), but mostly because it’s completely irrelevant.
As I said before: D.C. deserves representation because all Americans deserve representation, full stop. Emphasis on the “full stop”. To be clear: I’m a liberal, but I would support D.C. statehood even if they had cloned Strom Thurmond and were loudly promising to send Strom 2.1 and Strom 2.2 to the Senate for the next hundred years. Because partisan considerations don’t come close to overturning the bedrock principle that Americans deserve full representation. I support D.C. statehood; I would support it in a box, I would support it with a fox. I’d support it if I voted red; I’d support them making Strom undead. I support them on so many basis; I favor statehood in all cases.
A distant cousin of the “let’s get more votes” argument -- so distant that the arguments could hook up and it wouldn’t be weird -- is the “add D.C. because the Senate under-represents Black and brown voters” argument.3 People like Jonathan Chait, David Leonhardt, and Colin McAuliffe have made this case.4 They point out that, because the Senate over-represents rural states, and rural states are disproportionately white, the Senate significantly over-represents white people. The math here is beyond dispute: Every million white people is represented by 0.35 senators, while there are only 0.26 senators for every million Black Americans, 0.25 for Asian-Americans, and 0.19 for Hispanic Americans. Adding two senators from mostly-Black-and-brown D.C. would slightly lessen the disparity but not come close to overturning it.
My position here is a bit fiddly. I have a problem with anybody being over or under-represented. If I was building a political system from scratch, I wouldn’t include a Senate; I view the Senate as a poorly-designed thing we’re simply stuck with, like Dulles Airport. If we took race completely out of the equation, and you told me “the Senate under-represents people who live in urban areas,” I would say “that’s bad.” When you add “and people in urban areas are disproportionately non-white”...yes, the situation remains bad. To return to a theme: I oppose under-representation on a boat, I oppose under-representation with a goat. I oppose under-representation of any races; I oppose under-representation in all cases.
But imagine a situation in which two things are true: 1) The Senate just-so-happens to represent Americans of all races equally; and 2) D.C. has the same demographics as a Weezer concert in Utah. Obviously, neither of these things is remotely true in real life. But if they were true, adding D.C. would tip the balance so that the Senate would over-represent white people. Would I support D.C. statehood in this hypothetical case? Yes, because the principle that Americans should be represented overrules any principles about the demographics of the Senate. The representation principle is fundamental, it is bedrock, it is mandatory. If you think Jesus was a dumbass and worship the large toad who lives in the pond by your house, then you don’t believe in Christianity. And if you think that people who have all the obligations of citizenship should only have a say in how they’re governed if conditions A, B, and C are met, then you don’t believe in democracy. No other information is relevant.
I feel that advocates for D.C. statehood hold the principled high-ground and should never get pulled from that position. Republicans know that the principled argument against statehood is non-existent, so they try to change the conversation. We shouldn’t let them do that. All Americans deserve representation in their government, period, and no considerations about partisan politics, demographics, timber production, or the precise location of Ourisman Chevy/Buick do anything to change that.
This article is mostly about statehood for D.C., but I also support statehood for Puerto Rico if that’s what they choose. The “if that’s what they choose” part of that sentence is why I’m limiting myself to D.C. in this article; Puerto Rican statehood is not quite so straight-forward. Puerto Rico’s status is different from D.C.’s (they’re not subject to all the obligations of U.S. citizenship), and it’s not entirely clear that a majority of Puerto Ricans want to become a state. Unpacking those issues deserves it’s own article, so this article is about D.C.
D.C. would get one congressman, not five. It remains impossible to get a Donald Trump quote that doesn’t contain at least one flagrant lie.
Depending on how it’s framed, this argument is often more of a “add D.C. because it’s the right thing to do and also did you know that the Senate under-represents Black and brown people?” argument. But the link between disparate representation and the case for D.C. statehood is often explicit, so I think it’s fair to discuss the two points as a single argument.
Chait, Leonhardt, and McAuliffe are making principled arguments, because “people of different races should be equally represented” is a principle. And I would almost agree with it; my principle would be “people should be equally represented.” Obviously, that would rule out disparate representation on the basis of race. Of course, the existence of the Senate makes realizing my principle impossible; the fact that large states and small states both get two senators means representation will always be unequal.