And that would even make sense if it only included the part with the White House, the Capitol, the Mall and stuff. But it turns out to also include a city where a half million disenfranchised people live.

(I think DC statehood does sound like a complicated mess, and the best solution -- if politically feasible -- would be to shrink it. You'd have the populous city of Washington, MD, and a tiny federal District of Columbia, coexisting like Rome and the Vatican. The problem is that Maryland doesn't want it.)