Obama, Garland and D.C.’s Voting Status

Barack Obama has lived in the District of Columbia for some time. He first came here in 2005, when he was elected to the U.S. Senate. He became our most famous and visible resident when he was inaugurated as president of the United States in January 2009.

If you go by election results, he is extremely popular. Every time his name appears on the ballot, he gets an astonishing 90-plus percent of the vote. But there is no other way to say it: Obama continues to go out of his way not only to ignore the people of Washington, D.C., but to insult them.

You may recall that it took Obama more than four years to place the “Taxation Without Representation” license plates on his cars. He has never mentioned our third-class, voteless status in any of his seven State of the Union addresses. Also, there was the “I’ll give you D.C. abortion” remark during the tense, contentious budget negotiations with then House Speaker John Boehner. To say Obama has not been our advocate is the ultimate understatement.

This president is not one bit interested in being D.C.’s champion. His recent Supreme Court nomination demonstrated the degree to which he will go to belittle and diminish us. Judge Merrick Garland has an impressive educational and professional background. He went to the right schools, clerked for the right judges and worked for the right law firm. But as a federal judge, he made a very wrong decision when it came to D.C.’s existence and our efforts to become true citizens of this nation.

The case was Alexander v. Daley. It was an attempt to grant 650,000 citizens of D.C. full voting representation in Congress. The brilliant, eloquent Jamie Raskin and a battery of lawyers from Covington & Burling made our case. Garland wrote the decision that denied us the right to have a vote in our national legislature.

Garland’s justification for this decision was that we are not residents of a “state.” To me, this decision in March 2000 was a classic case of voter suppression. Garland did what he did because the very last thing he ever wanted to be called was a liberal.

A decision in favor of fairness and democracy would be too controversial and too risky to his career path. Garland did not want a “controversial” decision to stain his paper trail. So when it came to choosing a person to be nominated for the Supreme Court, Obama continued his pattern of saying to us, “You don’t count.”

To make matters worse, Mayor Muriel Bowser attended the announcement of the Garland pick at the White House, proudly tweeting a picture of herself. And, if that was not enough, she issued a statement giving absolutely no indication that she was even aware of Garland’s decisive role in injuring the District.

On another matter, but related to officials making bad choices, former D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams — who was never very visible on the question of D.C. voting rights during his eight years as mayor — seemed to be everywhere, performing the role of corporate shill for out-of-state Exelon in its takeover of Pepco. How sad and pitiful.

Political analyst Mark Plotkin is a contributor to the BBC on American politics and a contributor to TheHill.com. Reach him at markplotkindc@gmail.com.