Just hours ahead of a stunt by House Democrats to vote for Washington D.C. statehood on Friday, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports brought on Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser to try to boost the effort that was doomed to fail. After a few softball questions, Mitchell started attacking Republicans with the question, “How frustrating is it that Mitch Mcconnell won't even bring it to the floor?"
Happy to be given a platform to bash the GOP, Bowser ranted:
It's very frustrating. We've answered all of the questions that have been lobbied against us about statehood. And now all that is left is that the issue of whether Americans should be represented in the Congress who pay taxes is a partisan issue. Democrat versus Republican.But that's not really the question that the members should be asking themselves. They should be asking themselves what is fair and what reflects the principles of the American democracy. D.C. residents being the only people in the free world whose capital city residents aren't represented in the capital, is simply anti-American.
What Bowser did not mention was that D.C. statehood would solely benefit Democrats politically, namely giving them two seats in the Senate that would shift control over to the party. Being a Democrat herself, Mitchell never bothered to mention the real self-serving motivation behind the move.
Mitchell shifted the conversation back to the media’s favorite topic of late, race:
You tweeted today that the color of your skin shouldn’t determine whether you can vote, I'm paraphrasing there. Do you think there is a racial reason for this, for the district being without a vote?
D.C. actually breaks down racially into 46% back and 46% white, making it an absurd contention that somehow the issue of statehood was being held up because of the city's black population. But that didn't keep Bowser from insinuating just that in her response:
Well, we know the earliest discussions among the framers in the District of Columbia related to slavery. And we know that race has accompanied this discussion throughout. Everybody knows that we are proud of our rich, diverse history in the District of Columbia. African-Americans, people of color, and people of all backgrounds call D.C. home. And we should not -- people should not look to us and say that we're too urban, we're too black, we're too liberal. And that makes us different from the people of the other American states, and we have to justify our American citizenship and representation. That hasn't been the case for any state being added to the union and it shouldn't be the case for us.
Democrats love to make every issue racial, and since most in the media work for the Democratic Party, liberal hacks like Mitchell simply repeat the lines they're given. D.C. statehood is not racial, it is just controversial and likely unconstitutional. But that will never stop MSNBC from dividing Americans to help its friends on the left.
