Voting Rights Emergency: Calling President Obama
President Obama has a way with words. Unlike the somewhat elementary formulations of his predecessor, Obama has tackled a number of complex issues -- torture and Guantanamo Bay, relations with the Muslim world -- in recent speeches. He is keenly aware of the power his words hold, and he doesn't act like the American people are children lacking the capacity to understand and digest tough issues. It's time he stepped up and used his oratory for the sake of District voting rights.
We were encouraged when Obama, a friend of Mayor Adrian Fenty and a supporter of D.C. voting rights, was elected alongside a Democratic majority in Congress. D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton -- long the leader of the struggle for voting rights on the Hill -- was so confident of the capital's new political alignment that she predicted that a voting rights bill would clear Congress by February. Come June and we are where we've been many times before -- facing another apparent legislative defeat.
We could huddle up and try again, but there's little to reassure us that Republican senators and their NRA-fearing Democratic colleagues won't again try to attach another gun law-gutting amendment. We could have another march, we could send more residents to lobby members of Congress, we could buy more ads and complain a whole lot more. But when it's all said and done there's little to reassure us that any of what we've done in the past will suddenly work now. If a Democratic House shrugged their shoulders and handed us a draw only six months into its existence, why should we think they won't do the same in another six?
This is where Obama comes in. This may seem like a provincial issue that shouldn't occupy the time of the nation's elected leader, but the longstanding and systematic disenfranchisement of 600,000 U.S. residents -- not to mention the impact it has on the country's moral standing -- demands presidential intervention.
The District's lack of voting rights and the apparent inability by Congress to correct it has continued for this long because this hasn't yet been made into a national issue. Members of Congress can vote against D.C. voting rights because they know that their constituents likely don't know about the issue, or just don't care. And the real constituents that do care -- that would be us -- have no real leverage over those members and their votes. Activists have admirably traveled the country to spread the word and try and build grassroots support for D.C. voting rights. But when it's all said and done, there's simply not enough of us and not nearly enough money to make this as national an issue as Obama could in one speech.
President Obama has challenged Americans before. He's explained that recovering from the current economic crisis will take sacrifices. He has argued that a cleaner environment will require changes in our individual lifestyles. He has admitted that improving relations with the Muslim world will involve altering longstanding U.S. policies and practices. It's time he take to the lectern and forcefully challenge Congress to do something to enfranchise the District's residents.
It's too easy for most members of Congress to act like a few hundred thousand non-voting District residents don't count for anything. Obama should tell them differently. He should make it impossible for them to stand by their usual arguments that we're simply too corrupt or uneducated to handle our own affairs. He should call them out by name when they claim that D.C. doesn't need its own representative. He should make them publicly defend why they think the Founding Fathers would have wanted to deny a large group of American citizens the democratic rights granted by the Constitution, and for no better reason than geographic location. He should plainly ask the American people, "Is it OK to treat District residents like second-class citizens?"
Obama has nothing to lose. The worst Republicans can throw at him is that he's advocating for District voting rights to get himself two more Democratic senators and one more Democratic representative. If that's the best they can do, we're confident Obama's argument would prevail. The District's residents may be able to take this recent defeat in stride, but they shouldn't have to resign themselves to never getting voting rights. At this point, it seems like only President Obama has the words and the authority to make the case for them. He should.