Statehood for Washington DC

[John Clark]

In 2016 12 million more people voted for Democratic senators than Republican senators, and yet the Republicans actually increased their majority in the Senate that year. And the Democrats won the popular vote in 7 of the last 8 Presidential elections, and yet despite the wishes of the majority of the voters we've had a Republican president for 12 of the last 20 years, and Republican presidents have picked 16 out of the last 20 justices to the US Supreme Court. This is because conservative Republicans tend to live in rural states with small populations and, due to a deep fundamental flaw that has been in the US Constitution for nearly 250 years, small states have a ridiculously huge advantage over large states. The combined population of the 22 smallest states have 2.4 Million fewer voters in them than the largest state California, and yet those states have 44 senators but California only has 2. And those 22 small states have 98 electoral votes combined while California, even though it has a larger population, only has 55.

Now that the Republican party has transmogrified itself into the Trump Party (aka. the Fascist Party, aka the Looney Tunes Party) it is more important than ever to redress this inequality and do it in a way that does not require a constitutional amendment because that would be politically impossible.  One thing that would help would be to make Washington DC a state because it is one of the most heavily Democratic parts of the country and it has a larger population than Vermont or Wyoming. Right now the Democrats have control of the legislative and executive branches of the government so there would never be a better time to do it. A constitutional amendment is not required to add a state and it would be helpful to have 2 more senators who don't believe that reality is a liberal conspiracy.  It would be worth considering making Puerto Rico a state too.

Of course the Republicans will desperately try to stop anything like thhat because it wouald reduce their power, but they wouldn't be able to do that if the Senate would just get rid of the idiotic filibuster rule; but in order to do that  51 votes would be required and Senator Joe Manchin, although a Democrat, says he won't vote to get rid of the filibuster. So if Manchin doesn't change his mind the Democrats would need 2 members of the Looney Tunes Party to go along with them, and that won't be easy.

  John K Clark