WASHINGTON — It could have been a big moment: a congressional hearing room packed in such numbers that an overflow room was needed to accommodate the audience; a moment two decades in the making; an issue that had the support of President Obama.

But when only two senators showed up last month for the first congressional hearing since 1994 on the idea of making the District of Columbia its own state, it brought home that the event was more about what was not happening than what was. With Republicans on the verge of deepening their hold on the House — and perhaps taking over the Senate as well — advocates for D.C. statehood showed up in force despite the certainty that the hopes for statehood that had flourished with Mr. Obama’s election had hit a brick wall. The two senators who bothered to appear were Senator Tom Carper, the Democrat who sponsored the bill, and Senator Tom Coburn, a Republican, who showed up only to denounce it.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, the district’s nonvoting delegate to the House, said the hearing and what led up to it was an important part of a long struggle. “It single-handedly reinvigorated the statehood movement,” she said.

But most others saw an idea whose time has never quite come.

“I believe in the power of ideas,” said Garry Young, the director of the George Washington Institute of Public Policy and an expert on the statehood issue. “But ideas have their moment, and it’s already been decades for the district. I don’t see an end in sight.” Many like Mr. Young believe D.C.’s best hope may be more modest legislation aimed at pushing Congress out of its affairs.