really any change that is designed to give a party more short term political power is not ok. Just open the floodgates for pettiness. Dems dont give a F about lack of federal representation of those people, so they wont bite on reclassifying parts of DC as Maryland. Just like Rs dont give a F about the lack of federal representation of those people; they are just using the reclassify proposal to defuse the statehood proposal.
sorry DC, you got lost in the shuffle.
Just because Dems are motivated to work on the issue due to the potential political gain doesn’t mean they aren’t ALSO concerned with the representation of DC residents. It does mean they tend to favor DC statehood over returning most of the district to Maryland. But sometimes doing the thing that makes political sense aligns with doing the right thing.
if they were interested in the right thing, they would bite on returning much of DC to Maryland.
But im not convinced either side has much interest in that. Dems would rather hold DC out of federal elections and leverage them to get something else they want. If they let DC return to maryland, they lose that leverage. MD is already blue, they dont gain anything politically by letting them vote there.
Will give Dems some credit for at least trying to attach a just cause to their agenda. Rs can be overly obvious about their total disregard for what’s right (IE appointing a SC judge in lame duck mode)
They’d gain a congressional district, I suspect. DC is about the size of a congressional district, and adding it to MD would increase MD’s share by 1. I guess it depends which state would lose the other district, though, and I don’t know that.
True. But not nearly enough to give up the issue.
Dems are coming into negotiations saying ‘we want 2 permanent D senators’. settling for maybe 1 house seat is cents on the dollar.
seems like the strategy is actually NOT to negotiate. Go hard line on DC, SC, gun control, taxes, Green deal, etc. dont give up an inch, make the Rs block everything. Then go all in scorched earth to nuke the filibuster- they are getting everything or nothing. Obama years show what you get when you try to compromise.
Yep. And imaboutit
Democratic leadership believes in nothing other than their own power. They would sell out DC, LGBTQ people, people of color, or anyone else if they thought it would win them the next election.
it might work.
Every time Dems ‘fail’ to get an issue passed (today its DC, tomorrow guns, next week SC), it puts more pressure on the moderate senators to vote against the filibuster. Even if it takes 18 months to do it, that still gives them 6 months of free reign over the country. And a lot of the stuff they would pass would likely help keep them in power. So it may end up being 4 or 6 years of total policy monopoly.
Huge risk here is they actually nuke the filibuster. but then fail to keep power in 2022… Then biden has to spend 2 years vetoing insane bills and getting impeached every week.
Does MD want DC back? Right now they get the income tax base from the suburbs without the cost of the city.
Last I heard, MD doesn’t want DC. The addition of that much population would be too disruptive to the political status quo to make the state legislators comfortable.
I doubt it. It’s still the most reasonable solution to the “taxation without representation” problem.
Of course, as has been mentioned, that issue is the excuse for DC statehood, not the reason.
I’m sure there is some amount of money MD would accept to take the responsibility for the residential parts of DC. It might be a lot, but all in the name of representation.
One question would remain: what parts would remain non-permanent-residence DC?
Wondering where the nearest permanent residences are to the Mall.
First Glance:
2nd Street on the east.
Massachusetts on the northeast.
K Street on the north
Potomac on the west
D Street and I-395 on the south.
What would it take to change the boundaries of a state? The only times I’m aware of it happening are West Virginia splitting off (which took the Civil War, so throw that example out), states ceding claims in the early years of the country (so throw that example out), or states suing each other over minor boundary issues. This also feels like an academic thought experiment.
You mean thought.co experiment:
In 1925 , a final treaty with the United Kingdom clarified the boundary through the Lake of the Woods (Minnesota), resulting in the transfer of a few acres between the two countries.
Technically a border issue between countries.
I knew Maine was once a part of MA, and Vermont was part of, um, NY?
The Northwest Angle I would call a minor boundary dispute.
I’m lumping Maine in with states ceding their claims in the early days of the country.
Vermont was disputed territory between Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
So I stand by what I said about there not being much precedent for what would happen to DC, still wondering what it would take to occur, and still maintaining it as an academic thought experiment.
Oh, it definitely won’t happen.
Not a lot of precedent, recently. Mainly because it takes both states to agree AND for Congress to approve. (About the same amount of effort to change a Time Zone border.)
Also, I read somewhere that DC’s other half was given back to VA after it was deemed not needed. Not sure when. Oh, wiki says 1846. So there is SOME precedent of ceding part of DC (back) to a state. And since only two states could be involved there, it could be considered A LOT of precedent.
I think we agree it won’t happen and it’s all academic, but, still…
A big difference was that the retrocession was mostly rural space except for Alexandria. The retrocession that’s being proposed in this thread is very dense urban land affecting a lot of people. They’re not comparable situations imo.
Side note: I was out at a bar in Washington one night and met someone who claimed to have a relative with property containing one of the original boundary stones that were set up to mark the DC borders. I never got to see it, though.
Eh, they’d essentially get a House seat that would be virtually guaranteed to go blue every time, given that, especially with DC added, MD is basically guaranteed to have a Dem legislature for many many years to come.
A House seat is a much smaller prize than a House seat plus two Senate seats, admittedly. But it’s something they don’t currently have.
Based on the comment that if New York had counted 89 more people then Minnesota would have list a Representative instead, I take that to mean that at present it is MN-8 that’s on the bubble.
But that is something that would change periodically and sometimes be blue and sometimes red. The congressional district gained would basically always be blue.