An interesting analysis.
Guns and Voting Rights reveal new cracks in the District
By: John Vaught LaBeaume
Special to The Examiner
05/05/10 8:21 PM EDT
It's been over a week since the Democratic leadership in the U.S. House scuttled D.C. voting rights. Much has already been bleated about this. (Washington CityPaper's "Loose Lips" columnist extraordinaire Mike DeBonis pointed to a singularly astute analysis, from Chad Pergram over at FoxNews.com's Speaker's Lobby blog: "This bill would have drained what political capital [House Democrats] had left in the bank. And in this election climate, the price was simply too high.")
There does remain something to be said for a bill that would have encoded freedoms for District residents on more than one front. But the political calculus that prompted the cause's unceremonious scuttling points to trends that look to shape the District's electorate in decades to come.
The shelved bill, as introduced by U.S. House Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), would have - after nearly four long decades into Home Rule - granted United States citizens residing in the District of Columbia the simple right to elect a full-fledged Member of the United States House of Representatives, including full voting privileges on the House floor.
Glomming onto the legislation a bi-partisan rider amendment that would have gutted the District's restrictive gun control laws proved to be the bill's Achilles Heel. Skittish House Democrats - like amendment co-sponsor Rep. Travis Childers (D-MS) - elected from rural, culturally conservative districts have been eager for a chance to go on the record shoring up their Second Amendment cred as they face a cantankerous electorate this fall and this legislative Frankenstein offered those Members a vehicle to do that.
Voting rights advocates have admirably framed this undeniable inequity in time-honored patriotic rhetoric, foregoing the temptation to preach to the choir and couch the cause in trendy Lefty lingo. Reviving the Revolutionary War battle cry of "No Taxation without Representation" as their slogan reaches out to the DC-skeptical Middle American and appeals to his innate sense of basic American justice by drawing attention to the little known fact that District residents are among the only Americans who are subjected to the federal income tax with no means to say "no" when Congress tries to dig a little deeper into their pocketbooks.
Polling repeatedly indicates that support for D.C. voting rights remains popular across the District's demographic divide. This bill's demise, though, highlights a pointed contrast in the level of saliency that District voters in divergent demographic columns attach to the notion, especially when political circumstances force them to weigh the notion against competing values.
For a steadily growing segment of D.C.'s population, it was just too perfect a narrative: frothing redneck gun nuts conspire to deny the District of Columbia’s black majority a voice in Congress. This was the narrative entertained within the precincts of D.C. that are getting whiter and more liberal, more affluent and better degreed, convinced that they are the tolerant and cultured elite. No longer fashionably "bi-partisan," they are becoming almost uniformly partisan Democrats. This storyline permits them to slap themselves on the back for refusing to yield an inch on gun control, with the self-complacent satisfaction that in stymieing the nefarious Gun Lobby's power play.
Their fealty to their vaguely liberal notion of the Democratic Party's platform is more enduring than their dedication to a District renaissance. Washington, D.C. is just one stop in their career. After a stint on K Street or Capitol Hill, or trying to save the world on behalf of a public interest group, it's off to grad school, or the next job offer in Boston or Brooklyn.
This is manifested at the polls on Election Day. Each September's Democratic hotly contested mayoral primary is nearly always tantamount to election (though fmr. Republican At-Large D.C. Council Member Carol Schwartz gave the Democrats a respectable run in four general elections). These transient white professionals turn out in embarrassingly modest numbers on that day. Contrast that fact with the lines larded with white faces that wended around the block last November, eager to help Barack Obama clobber Republican John McCain by the most lopsided margin since DC residents were granted three votes in the Electoral College. When these folks move on, Obama will still be their president. Adrian Fenty, Vince Gray and Eleanor Holmes Norton will be only a distant memory.
However, across the Anacostia River, D.C. Council Member Yvette Alexander (D-Ward 7) was bluntly unsentimental about the efficacy of gun control laws: "There are not going to be legal guns committing these crimes, it's going to be illegal guns," Alexander said. "There are still going to be AK-47s, even without the gun amendment."
In comments that indicated she could maybe live with the gun rider if it finally meant D.C. got the vote, Alexander spoke up for her African-American constituents, a sizable chuck of whom proudly come from long lines of disenfranchised native Washingtonians starved for a vote in Congress.
Back in Adams Morgan, the AP quoted Adams Morgan's Betsy Cutler who voiced her cohort's priorities succintly: "As much as I want the vote in the city, I think the gun ban is hugely important." By November 2012, many of her neighbors will quit the District, while Alexander's constituents will still be raising new generations of Washingtonians in Ward 7.
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