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Unity isn’t what it sounds like, but two new states would help

The main theme of Joe Biden’s inauguration as 46th President was unity. He repeatedly appealed to it, as did others who came to the podium. But what does it really mean?

It can’t mean unanimity. In a democracy, disagreement, dissent, and debate are the norm, not the exception. If “reaching across the aisle” is to be a reality, on most issues it will mean bringing a few from the other side over to vote with the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. Most Democrats and most Republicans won’t agree on most things, which is why we have Democrats and Republicans.

Nor can “unity” mean reconciling with the most extreme forces. No one is suggesting that the rioters of the 1/6 insurrection are part of whatever is meant by unity. Many are felons who belong in prison rather than in a political dialogue. Nor are those in Congress who de facto supported the insurrection with their votes against accepting the election results a force to be unified with. One of them has already filed impeachment charges against Biden, for his son’s alleged misdeeds. That won’t go anywhere, but there is no bridge to be built in that direction.

Biden did not specify what he meant by unity, but I think I know. He means agreement on the rules of the political game. That’s where things went haywire in the 2020 election and its aftermath. Republicans refused to accept many of the election procedures, even in states where they control the legislature and the electoral mechanism like Georgia and Arizona. After failing in more than five dozen court challenges, they continued to deny the validity of the election results. Their votes against certifying the electoral votes in the House and Senate were the last straw, especially following the attack on The Capitol.

The strife over electoral procedures and results is going to get worse, not better, despite Biden. Covid-19 created an obvious need for more readily accessible voting, by drop box and mail. Republicans will try to get rid of that accessibility before the 2022 election by requiring voter IDs, limiting absentee voting, and eliminating same-day registration. Reacting to one version of the Covid-19 relief bill the Democrats proposed, Trump himself said this:

The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,

The proof is in the pudding: Trump lost to Biden by almost 7 million votes, more than twice the margin of popular votes by which he lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016. Four years hence, given the aging of the Republican base and the Democratic predilections of younger people, that margin could be even larger. This makes the Electoral College, where a difference of 44,000 votes in three states could have given Trump victory, a growing problem.

But it can’t be solved readily. The more immediate, and less difficult, issue is the Senate, where the 50 Republican members represent 41 million fewer people than the 50 Democratic members. This is crazy. But there are some partial solutions readily available: admit the District of Columbia (whose 700,000 residents would be represented by two senators and one member of the House) and Puerto Rico (whose 3.2 million residents would be represented by two senators and four or five members of the House). Both the District and Puerto Rico have voted in favor of statehood. The District would become the [Frederick] Douglas Commonwealth (hence still DC).

It takes only a majority vote in both Houses to admit a new state, but in the Senate this proposition would face the filibuster, which can be overcome only with 60 (out of 100) votes. The filibuster has been abolished for particular issues (most Federal appointments and Supreme Court Justices), so why not do it for admission of new states to the Union? That is a narrowly defined category. There are four more US territories (other than PR), but the largest of them is Guam, with 168,000 people. Even if the other territories want statehood, their odds of getting 50% of the Senate to agree to it are minimal.

The House and Senate Democrats could do worse than put DC and PR statehood at the top of their priority list. Admission to the Union would partially redress gross inequities and give the residents of both places the voices in Congress that their numbers merit. The Republicans will vote against, but once admitted they will be compelled to do what they don’t do now: try to win the votes of nearly 4 million people they now ignore. That would be a most welcome kind of unity.