Winning the Senate Through DC and PR Statehood: From Your Lips To Goddess' Ears

Geoffrey Skelley:

It’s been 60 years since a new state entered the union, but now Democrats and liberals are accelerating efforts to gain statehood for Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. One of their motivations is the future of the U.S. Senate, which is currently biased toward the Republican Party. The logic goes that if Democrats can get unified control of the federal government after the 2020 election, they could push through statehood for both, adding four more seats to the Senate, and all four would likely be Democratic leaning. That might seem far-fetched, but the U.S. has a rich history of partisan state-making.

Like the ruinously entrenched conservative court, ending the anti-democratic skew of sparsely populated States in Congressional representation and the Electoral College requires a kind of hardball from Democrats I find it hard to imagine (the long shot of winning the Senate in 2020 despite GOP shenanigans followed by ending the Senate filibuster would surely be required at a minimum), but perhaps Trumpism will have steeled sufficient spines if and when the time comes to act...