OPINION & EDITORIAL
A capital offense
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Also by Mac VerStandig:
- How the Pentagon won the war over Baghdad and the war over public opinion (April 25, 2003)
- Hypocrisy floats riverboats casinos (September 9, 2005)
- Hate crime debate needed on campus (January 20, 2006)
Related Stories:
- Recent polls reveal... absolutely nothing (December 4, 2007)
- Primaries deserve mature thinking (October 18, 2007)
- Richardson can save Democrats (January 18, 2007)
- 'Oprabama?' No thank you (December 10, 2007)
- Howard Dean's 'Hee-yah' (January 23, 2004)
by Mac VerStandig
Monday, January 19, 2004
WASHINGTON — The nine ambitious Democrats hoping to unseat President Bush are currently paying their dues to the good people of Iowa and New Hampshire in hopes of emerging from the respective primaries with an early lead in the sprint to Washington. It is little secret that the candidates’ interests in visiting these two rural states are almost purely selfish; Howard Dean looks about as comfortable in a cornfield as Michael Moore at an NRA convention. But in order to gain momentum, Democrats must place well in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two battlegrounds in the war of ‘04, right?
Actually, they aren’t.
The real first primary in America was held Tuesday, Jan. 13, and Howard Dean emerged victorious with 42 percent of the vote. Yet this first-in-the-nation contest was regarded with such utter disdain that Joe Lieberman, John Edwards, Wesley Clark and John Kerry didn’t even permit their names to grace the ballot.
What far-flung outpost of this nation could possibly hold a primary so repulsive that it is treated with almost total ignorance?
Dripping with the sort of irony that one could surely only find in America, the host of this bastard primary is none other than this fair town, home of the very White House that these nine men do so desire to overtake.
So why is our capital’s primary so repugnant?
Simply put, because the contest is worthless. You see, the Washington, D.C., primary has no actual weight in the election of a party’s candidate for the presidency, rendering those ballots cast a show with all the substance of Dennis Kucinich’s candidacy.
This might seem strange given that during the general election, the District of Columbia is allotted three votes in the Electoral College, making it just as valuable a battleground as Montana, Vermont or either of the Dakotas.
But for the 572,000 residents of this mid-Atlantic city, presidential elections are the extent of their political voice on the federal matters that are debated in their own backyard. Not one of the U.S. Senate’s 100 members is responsible for Washington, D.C.’s constituency, and the city’s sole delegate to the House of Representatives is not permitted to vote on legislation.
If Washingtonians are not represented, then according to the principles on which this nation was founded, they are not taxed, right? Sadly, the citizens of this city pay the same federal taxes as everyone else in the union. In fact, their license plates read, “Taxation Without Representation.”
Paul Revere may well be turning over in his grave.
Now, in all fairness, the citizens of Washington, D.C., don’t have the finest of histories when it comes to casting votes. In the ’80s they elected a gentleman named Marion Barry to be their mayor; in 1990, while still in office, he was arrested for possession of crack cocaine. After serving out his sentence, Barry ran for re-election in 1994.
Amazingly, he won.
A reformed man, right? Five years later he would again be found with crack.
Moreover, Barry was a divisive leader. He once famously proclaimed, “All laws are racist. The law of gravity is racist,” a statement that does little to serve the best interests of a city with more “minorities” than Iowa and New Hampshire combined. (“Minorities” is a relative term, because in Washington, D.C., African Americans actually constitute a majority.)
And so during Barry’s reign, the federal government, despite being unrepresentative of Washingtonians, revoked most of the powers once vested in the city’s mayor.
But if a few rotten decisions at the polls were justification for removing the tongues of voters, the state of Wisconsin might have developed a permanent lisp after electing a gentleman named McCarthy.
Don’t be confused, though; this city’s lack of representation is an injustice that long predates Marion Barry’s jailhouse escapades. And so do our capital’s problems.
Washington, D.C., houses nearly 10,000 persons per square mile. Twenty percent of our capital’s population lives below the poverty line. There are more murders here per capita than anywhere else in America. Washington, D.C., has a higher crime rate than Baghdad.
And yet more than a fifth of this city’s citizens are children. Surely they deserve a brighter future; surely they deserve the opportunity to turn their hometown around; surely they deserve a shot at the American dream.
But the American dream is predicated on the possibilities of democracy, something in which these citizens are not invited to participate.
Maybe in lieu of a primary, the people of Washington, D.C., should have held a tea party.
Mac VerStandig (mac@badgerherald.com) is a sophomore majoring in rhetoric.
