Money talks in the new D.C.

Tom Sherwood and I don’t agree on much, especially in public. But WRC-TV’s top political reporter and I have both arrived at the same conclusion: Economics and money, rather than politics and the government, are determining the fate of the nation’s capital. I would add that money is trumping race as the District’s new wedge issue.

The subject surfaced Monday night at the Shaw Library during a discussion of our 1994 book, “Dream City: Race, Power and the Decline of Washington, D.C.” The faces of the folks who filled the room reflected the city’s change: In 1994, Shaw was the heart of a community that had been African American since the 1930s; Monday’s crowd was overwhelmingly Caucasian.