Let's give it to North Dakota. That state will turn Blue and it will be hard to gerrymander the districts with largest population center of the state being next to VA and Maryland.
Ultimately, this is all about politics and winning. Arguing about the merit is just bs dressing. By my count, Republicans added (at the time) 10 Senators in the span of 1 year (1889-1890). And they did this right before the 1890 census because if they waited, a few of those wouldn't qualify - didn't have enough population! That shifted political power to now rural low population states. This isn't any idea of the founder, was not based on any merits; it was a pure political power move. What we see now (over-representation of rural Americans) is due to that power grab 130 years ago. What the DEM is trying to do now, adding 2 or 4 senators that should be Democratic is mild in comparison. If there is merit to argue here, it's to try to re-balance the power to the majority who has lost power. The last 3 presidential elections won by Republicans were all won by the minority. 5 of the current supreme court justices were appointed by president won by the minority. Again, this wasn't any awesome foresight by the founders to give minorities so much power (they probably would freak out), it was due to pure political power grab over 100 years. DEM has been chicken and is now just waking up - but we'll see if they actually have the backbone to re-balance power.
We need to remember that the Republican party of 1889 wasn't the same party as now. My understanding is that by adding low population Midwestern states was also meant to dilute the power of former Confederate states.
2 of the last 3. Bush had more votes than Kerry. It would be factual though to say that republicans have won one popular vote since December 1988 until October of 2024. Which is flat out ridiculous if truly look at it.
The Democratic party wasn't the same party then either. These are interesting historical issues but not much relevant to where the parties are today.
"Yes, I know I'm with the white supremacists now, but I didn't hear you confronting the white supremacists 57 years ago, so how does that OWN taste on your avocado toast libs!"
The late 19th century Republicans lost the popular majority when they swing toward Big Business. It was a deliberate strategy to stay in power. The bigger point is this is all political power grab and what we are seeing now (the imbalance nature of power) is due to that, not some ideal from the founding father that minority should have this much power. They are supposed to have good power, not majority power. I doubt the founder's intent it to get this bad. Whatever the case, pure political power grab is what is the cause of the shift of power balance... flaw or whatever in our constitution that allow this, it will continue to be the way forward as long as politic is about power (when is it not?). Arguing on the merit of statehood is pretty pointless when the main driving factor is political power. Today Republican fully understands this - see all of the voter suppression and anti-democratic maneuvers over the years. DEM debate among themselves while Republicans just do it. And as I said before, if there is a merit, it is about an actual fair balance of power. The balance has shifted too much to minority rule. When Adding New States Helped the Republicans - The Atlantic
I don't disagree with that adding states like the Dakotas was about power. Trying to dilute the power of the former Confederate states pretty much says that. I don't disagree that the resistance towards adding DC or PR is about power and also one of the impetus' driving adding them. I'm just pointing out that it was more than just adding rural states so that we could have minority control 150 years later. Also in terms of looking at past Democrats and Republicans Democrats under FDR and LBJ certainly did while it was the Republicans who debated amongst themselves. Historically it's been less about something intrinsic in the parties and more who led them how they acted.
Just because people want this or that for their own representation doesn't mean I have to agree to give it to them. Their having two senators hurts me as a Texan. And their benefit is marginal at best. I don't consent. And honestly I'd be shocked and dismayed if Democratic senators from places like California or New York voted for it, as it dilutes their own power. It's bad enough their Reps did. On size, I think there are two considerations: population and geography. Population is obvious because we're talking about representing the interests of people. And we have the House to slice representation that way. Geography is a consideration because when you have people separated by large distances or natural boundaries, interests tend to diverge. So it does make some sense to give representation based on geography even to those sparsely populated places. I think having a thinly populated state like Wyoming makes more sense than a dense but tiny state like Rhode Island. However, if I had to pick the lesser of two evils, I would sooner merge Wyoming and South Dakota (which, btw, also helps Texas) than I would grant DC statehood. (On a tangent, and perhaps as a concession, aside from slicing the people's representation according to numbers and geography, we tend to have disparate interests in urban and rural settings, by race (the third rail), and by gender. There are many ways to skin the cat, I'm just partial to the one we built.) Fine, I'll repeat myself. The way Congress is designed, the House is explicitly built to represent people by their numbers by having each House district have roughly the same number of constituents. The Senate is built to represent the people by their State. It recognizes that the state is the primary building block of the Union and that states should have equal say in the Senate regardless of their size so that you don't have big states bullying the small ones. So it matters to everyone in the Union when you grant a statehood. I think they will want to. And, in my view, this can go on no longer. I think we're coming to a point where they (and we) must decide, be a state or leave. I don't want them as a territory any longer. Congress needs to stop letting status quo be an option. The fate of Puerto Rico doesn't only affect them, it affects everyone in the country. So we should all be involved in the decision-making. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8/ This should be a cautionary tale. In 1889, Republicans were the liberal party. They wanted to dilute the federal power of Southern Democrats so they could pursue their more progressive agenda. It helped at the time but look what's happened since. Now these states added in the late-19th century are the bastions of conservative power. This is a power play by Democrats who find it acceptable to cede some of the power of their own states because they believe that DC is sufficiently aligned with their own views to be their proxy votes in the Senate. That's probably true today. But it would not be a surprise at all if a half-century from now the 51st state is a constant thorn in the side of the Pacific coast states, for example -- on the other side of the continent, they may end up with very divergent interests.
Cautionary tale if you care about 100 years down the road. Politician don't. Political party maybe, but doubtful. They want to win now. How are you ceding power by adding more member to your team when it's a team sports that win/loss 99.8% of the time based on # of team members you have vs the other teams?
So then I was like "Herr Schrodinger, your thought experiment is nice and all but in my PERSONAL view, **** your cat, dogs are better - and also I don't even know why you'd have a box when you could have a cage instead, and also why do they call this the Solvay conference? It's in Brussels it SHOULD be called the Brussels conference, if anything.
Maybe you as a voter cares about 100 years down the road. I do. On the latter point, that is the crux of it, isn't it? Democrats in Congress see potential Senators from DC as their allies, and their addition weakens "the enemy" more than it does themselves. They don't worry that small states get twice the federal funding per capita their big state does, or that East Coast senators won't see things the same way as their Midwest or West Coast constituencies. The party interest trumps their state interest. I'm sympathetic to the Democratic platform, but I'm not so loyal that I would think of myself as more Democrat than Texan (or, in my view, conscientious believer in the ideals of our Constitution). I won't do just anything to aggrandize the party.
Thanks for flagging me @jiggyfly. This is something DC and DC democrats want and they want get the votes in the Senate to pass it. And maybe if they can convince enough people that this has to happen for the sake of democracy for DC, they can pressure enough Senators to make it through -- or at least make Republicans look bad and get more Dem votes on the margin. I just want to make the argument this isn't the obvious best solution for democracy in DC. And not only does this idea not have overwhelming public support, they can't even get all their own constituents to back it. My opinion doesn't matter to this drama. But they aren't winning the votes on the margin with this issue either.
I don't have a crystal ball, but I do know what a power imbalance looks like especially when I'm living through it now. The state and party interest are all but the same is my point. If TX dem wants universal health care for Texans, they can increase the chances of that by re-balancing the power toward the party politically.
