Why D.C. should be a state

More than 700,000 American citizens live in Washington, D.C., said Paul Waldman. That’s greater than the population of Wyoming or Vermont. Yet the district has “no voting representation in Congress”— no House members, and no senators. “No one who believes in democracy can justify” this injustice, which requires Washington’s residents—46 percent of whom are black—to pay taxes to the federal government without representation. Last week the House voted to make D.C. the 51st state, but the bill “will fall into the black hole of Mitch McConnell’s Senate.” Republicans oppose statehood because the district is heavily Democratic. But if Democrats retake the Senate and Joe Biden wins the presidency, D.C. statehood becomes a real possibility; to get the necessary legislation through the Senate by a simple majority, Democrats would have to eliminate the filibuster. “If anyone charges that Democrats want statehood” so as to gain two Senate seats, Democrats should reply, “So what?” It would be “merciless hardball politics” like the kind McConnell practices all the time. Face it: “If D.C. voted reliably Republican, it would have been a state by now.”