I'm beginning to wonder what in the world the political establishment in this city could possibly be thinking of when it won't concentrate any attention to the question of who will be representing the District of Columbia at the DC National Convention.  Who will be the face, the heart and most importantly the voice of the citizens of DC - we who face second-class citizenship that is in today's world the moral equivalent of 3/5th a citizen.  Why isn't all of our luxuriant media going over candidates with a fine-tooth comb, culling out the duds and holding the earnest, capable ones up for public review and some words of encouragement?  Does it make any difference?  Heck yes, it makes more difference for us than it does for any other voting jurisdiction in the good old USA!

We need to be represented not by folk who come to the convention to partee, partee, partee, but by people who will have spent months researching every single legal thing they could possibly come up with to gain the attention of every single delegate to that convention of to the essential unjustness of a two-tier level of citizenship. Was it unjust that my husband and thousands of other DC residents like him served loyally in Viet Nam despite not having any elected representative able vote in his and my name on the rightness or wrongness of that war?  Yes - it WAS unjust.  It WAS unfair.  Is it equally unjust to have my military-serving son-in-law, along with my daughter and baby grandchild posted in a place of danger (the capital of a country in the Middle East) when my congressional delegate has no means of voting on what the American response should be to events in that country or any other tinderbox in that region?  Unjust!  Unfair!

The unique patch of land known as the District, is home to over half a million people who are de facto  subjects, not citizens.  There is at least one state with fewer people in it, and most people don't question their residents' right to be represented. I  do. We all should.   The idea of a democracy is all or nothing  They've got it all, and we have close to nothing.


Why is this still happening?  Because it's convenient to have a whipping boy.  Because it's useful to be able to divert attention from the dreadful actions of their own pigheaded politicians by pointing out the sorry state of ours.  Every politician wants some place to point at, some place other than his/her own constituency to hold up as the epitome of everything wrong.  It's safe - heck, it's fun to throw curses at the District and its citizens. It happens every day.   We are not allowed to be seen as citizens because the shameful awfulness of some of our political class - the people who claim to speak for us  - is, in fact, no better and no worse then the bozos who represent our detractors, but they are bozos who have votes to cast, and we don't.  Their votes shield them;  we have no defense.

Residents of DC! (I will not call you citizens because I don't think you are) Come out and vote on Saturday. It's important to do this. Vote for people who aren't slick, for people who aren't being subsidized by folk you wouldn't want to meet in a DC alley at night. Come on out and vote for people who will work hard, who will support Obama not just in DC but in the surrounding states where the vote really counts, people who want all of us to be living in an urban area that takes good care of its residents and who will work to make that happen, people who are prepared to make that happen, in a place that sooner rather than later can be respected because it will have achieved the same rights as the capitals of almost every other major country in the world –– at least the ones that truly deserve to be called democracies. Unlike this one.  We Americans have a blind eye to our deficiencies - and lack of voting representation is a deficiency that has blinded our otherwise democratic country.  We can change that.  Elect people who will work to make that happen.