With Weak Economy, Obama May Lose Key Demographic Groups

See LAT, "Obama's demographic support may not weather economy."

Actually, blacks are still enthusiastic about the president. See NYT, "Black Voters’ Support for Obama Is Steady and Strong." But check the graphic at LAT, "Key States for Obama's Reelection." White voters in Florida, Ohio and Nevada will be especially crucial, and Latinos as well, who aren't going to be as wedded to the Democrats as black voters. Colorado and New Mexico will be problematic as well, despite higher levels of college educated whites. Perhaps that's why Obama continues to ramp up the class warfare rhetoric. Polls show a lot of sympathy with the occupy movement. No doubt the White House hopes the protesters don't start turning on him, mentioning that he's in the pocket of these same big banks and Wall Street brokerages. See Weasel Zip, "Obama Uses Occupy Wall Street’s Language, Rails Against “The Top 1%”…"

Americans Abandon the Heartland

Something that's always fascinating to me, at WSJ, "Population Leaves Heartland Behind: Census Shows Growth Fueled by Increasingly Diverse Metro Areas; in Kansas, a Small Town Tears Down Empty Homes":

Americans continued to abandon the nation's heartland over the past decade, moving into metropolitan areas that have grown less white and less segregated, the 2010 Census showed.

The U.S. population grew by 27 million over the decade, to 308 million. But growth was unevenly distributed. Metropolitan areas, defined as the collection of small cities and suburbs that surround an urban core with at least 50,000 people, accounted for most of the gain, growing 10.8% over the decade to 257.7 million people.

Rural areas, meanwhile, grew just 4.5% to 51 million. Many regions—from the Great Plains to the Mississippi Delta to rural New England—saw population declines. About 46% of rural counties lost population in the decade, including almost 60% of rural counties that aren't adjacent to a metro area, according to an analysis of Census data by Kenneth Johnson, senior demographer at the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire.

Keep reading at the link above.

Small-town life is the repository of traditional values, so it's sometimes sad to see the rural towns declining. I developed a feel for the rural life living in Fresno, and I've noted a couple of times at the blog that I've thought about relocating. It won't be anytime soon, since I'm not near retirement, but I think about it. I know my wife would consider rural Central California north of Fresno, but I'm thinking we might like it out of state. I'll think more about this. Some readers have warned me that I'll get tired of small-town life in no time ...

Many Fans Don't Feel Safe at Chavez Ravine: Dodgers Hire Bratton to Develop Security Plan

Two stories at Los Angeles Times, here and here.

And a news report from KABC Los Angeles:

Illegal Immigrants Factor Into 2010 Census

No surprise there, at Fox News, "Illegal Immigrants Factor Into 2010 Census Results, Congressional Makeup":

Census data released Tuesday reflects how illegal immigration could shape the makeup of Congress, with border states and other immigration magnets registering big gains over the past decade.

Though the latest Census Bureau information does not include breakouts on race or ethnicity, Western and Southern states with large, or at least growing, immigrant populations were generally the ones that gained enough new residents to warrant additional congressional seats.

Illegal immigrants would constitute just one of several factors in the population shifts recorded in that time. But since illegal immigrants are counted in the U.S. Census by law, they have an inevitable impact on the way House seats are divvied up.

"You can see how they can have a big impact on the distribution of seats," said Steven Camarota, research director with the Center for Immigration Studies. "Michigan and Pennsylvania are going to lose a seat and it's going to go to some other place ... because of the inclusion of illegal immigrants."

Camarota estimated the total number of illegal immigrants counted in the 2010 Census at about 10 million. Total population growth for immigrants in the United States exceeded 13 million over the last 10 years. With the U.S. population at 309 million, that might sound like a drop in the melting pot. But their numbers start to make a difference on a state-by-state level.

Several states with large immigration populations, both legal and illegal, will gain at least one seat out of the latest census numbers. They include Florida, Texas, Arizona and Nevada. South Carolina, Georgia and Washington state, which all saw unusually high rates of growth in their immigrant populations over the past decade, will also gain a congressional seat each. South Carolina, for instance, registered a 150 percent increase in its immigrant population, according to a CIS analysis.

Camarota said that regardless of whether the changes are coming from influxes of illegal or legal immigrants, more districts are going to be created with swaths of people in them who can't vote.

Slaves couldn't vote either, but they bulked up the South's representation after 1787. The Democrats were for slavery back then too.

2010 Congressional Reapportionment: Winners and Losers

Check the interactive graphic at New York Times.



Plus, "Power in Congress to Tilt South and West" (via Memeorandum).

And at the Rose Institute, Claremont McKenna College, "2010 Apportionment Continues 40-year shift to South/Southwest."



PREVIOUSLY: "After Census, Texas Leads Way on Immigration Politics."

After Census, Texas Leads Way on Immigration Politics

Census numbers are out today and Texas will pick up four seats in the House of Representatives.

The Texas Tribune has the numbers, "Apportionment Nets Texas Four New Congressional Seats." And Bloomberg reports on how the state's Latino population is responding, "Texas Hispanics to Challenge Status Quo in Reapportionment."

And see New York Times, "After Dream Act Setback, Eyeing a Sleeping Giant":

HOUSTON — About 37 percent of Texas residents are of Hispanic origin, and the state has a long history of welcoming newcomers who work hard and obey the law. So the state would seem likely to support a bill to grant citizenship to thousands of foreign-born college students.

Yet the two Republican Senators from Texas, Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, both voted to block the bill, known as the Dream Act, from coming up for a vote on Saturday.

Neither senator was moved by protests and hunger strikes in San Antonio, nor by calls from religious leaders to pass the bill, nor by newspaper articles about the children of undocumented immigrants who had made it to college, only to be picked up for traffic violations and threatened with deportation.

Their votes are another sign of how strong the reaction to illegal immigration has grown among Republicans in Texas, a state where Mexicans, with visas or without, have always been an integral part of the society.

Beyond anger about Washington’s spending, immigration policy was also on the agenda of many of the conservatives who came out in droves to vote in the November midterm elections.

The question now is whether the failure of the Dream Act will create a backlash among Hispanic voters against the Republicans in power.

It has already become a cause for some young Hispanics in Texas. One group of hunger strikers in San Antonio has vowed to use the defeat as a rallying cry to build a broad movement for an immigration overhaul.

“There is a lot of anger, disillusionment,” said Arturo Chavez, the president of a Catholic organization in San Antonio who lobbied for the bill. “But all the young people I talk to are even more determined than ever.”

The political winds seem against them, however. Since the election, Texas lawmakers have introduced dozens of bills intended to discourage illegal immigration, chief among them an Arizona-style law making it a crime to be in the state without a visa.

The Republican tide in November gave the party a two-thirds majority in the State House, prompting one Hispanic Democrat to switch parties recently.

What is more, the Dream Act was supposed to be the easy part of the immigration overhaul to pass, a law that taps into notions of meritocracy. Proponents say they are dismayed that such a moderate measure could not win passage even with a Democratic president and Democratic majorities in both chambers.

The Texas GOP risks a backlash, although the Bloomberg report cites Republican Blake Farenthold from Brownsville, on the Mexican border, who is optimistic:

"South Texans are mainly Catholics with traditional values and people who value a hard day’s work ... We’ve done a poor job until this election of getting that message across."

The GOP majority in the legislature, which will control the redistricting process, will likely pack Latino voters into key districts, hence diluting that bloc's impact on state politics.

This story is developing. Republicans will gain power at the national level. Expect updates, but see National Journal, "An Embarrassment of GOP Riches," and Politico, "The Reapportionment Rundown." Plus, at NYT, "Census Data Show 308 Million People and a Regional Shift."

Bunkering Down in the Bluest of Blue States

From yesterday afternoon: "Kamala Harris wins attorney general's race as Steve Cooley concedes." (At Memeorandum and Crooks and Liars, where folks are thrilled with Harris' radicalism.)



Democrats have now won every single statewide race. Some might recall that I've contemplated leaving California, although that's entirely impossible at this point. I'll no doubt be having continuing thoughts on this, unless something improves soon, which is unlikely. A poll out a couple of weeks ago was no consolation. I'll be down in the bunker if you need me. From the Los Angeles Times:

The road to redemption for the Republican Party in California may be even rougher than November's statewide electoral drubbing indicated, as a new Los Angeles Times/USC poll shows a deep reluctance among many voters to side with a GOP candidate and broad swaths of the state holding views on government's role that conflict with Republican tenets.



California voters surveyed in the poll repudiated the party's stance on illegal immigration by endorsing a host of positions intended to make it easier for the undocumented to gain legal status. Their support for same-sex marriage outnumbered that opposing any legal recognition by more than 3 to 1. Californians also endorsed an assertive role for government in protecting minority citizens, regulating corporations and helping the poor and needy, and rejected arguments that an activist role for government had harmed the fiber of American society.



The negative overlay both explained and helped determine the fates of the party's candidates in November. As a GOP tide swept the nation, Republicans here lost all statewide offices, with one contest, for attorney general, still unresolved but leaning toward the Democrat. Republicans here also failed to gain any congressional seats and lost a legislative seat.



Strikingly, almost one in five California voters said they would never cast a ballot for a Republican. Among Latinos, that rose to almost one in three. Only 5% of California voters were as emphatically anti-Democrat.



"I don't know how any Republican thinks they can win in California after looking at this," said GOP pollster Linda DiVall, who with Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg directed the survey for The Times and the USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences.



The party faces a critical collision between its own voters, a minority in California, and those it needs to attract to win. The most faithful Republicans this year — those who voted for both Meg Whitman for governor and Carly Fiorina for Senate — said by a 27-point margin that to be more successful, Republicans should nominate "true conservatives."



But among the majority of voters who spurned Whitman and Fiorina in November — and in whose good graces any future winning candidate would need to be — the results were reversed. Forty-three percent said that future Republican candidates needed to be more moderate. Only 20% said that Republicans should nominate "true conservatives."



As those figures help illustrate, the GOP's difficulties in California rest on two overlapping conflicts, ideological and demographic. The party's conservative primary voters determine nominees, even if their views are often opposite those of the far more moderate general election audience. And the party's white and conservative voter base is increasingly giving way to the state's non-white and nonpartisan population.

RTWT.



Related: At Michelle's, "DREAM Act nightmare: 2.1 million future Democrat voter recruitment drive."

Gloria Allred's Feminist Grievance Industry May Have Helped Sink Billionaire Meg Whitman

Yeah, it's obvious, but I'm responding to the folks at LAT. It's really one long gusher-piece on "the most famous woman attorney practicing law in the nation today..." See, "Legal Fray Still Suits Gloria Allred Just Fine." But note at the end of the quote below how the Times suggests that Allred's sponsorship of Nicandra Diaz Santillan pre-election publicity stunt may have helped decide the election:

When you walk into Gloria Allred's office to interview her, she hands you her book — "Fight Back and Win" — and suggests you read it. Immediately.

"Would you mind?" she asks. "I think it will answer some questions."

Smiling, she leaves you in the firm's conference room, with its long, glossy table and panoramic view of Los Angeles. This is where Allred holds most of the news conferences that have made her both famous and infamous — sitting at the head of the table, jaw set, arm wrapped tightly around a weepy client as cameras zoom in.

This afternoon, it's a study hall for a lone reporter frantically skimming the book subtitled "My Thirty-Year Fight Against Injustice — and How You Can Win Your Own Battles."

Whether you see this command cram course as an exercise in vanity or efficiency won't matter to Allred. As she writes in the book, "Early in my career, I decided that if I intended to be a strong advocate for women I couldn't be deterred by my critics."

She has not been. Allred has escorted into the spotlight a parade of castoff women — the TV star fired for being too pregnant, the banker fired for being too sexy, the jilted mistresses and wronged girlfriends of famous philanderers and murderers.

With her latest client — the sad-eyed housekeeper Nicandra Diaz Santillan — she may have helped spoil the gubernatorial chances of billionaire candidate Meg Whitman. After the housekeeper said she had worked for Whitman for nine years and then been fired for being undocumented, Whitman's poll numbers dropped and Jerry Brown's lead widened.

RTWT.

It wasn't just the Diaz scandal, but if some Latinos were on the fence, the explosive allegations may have shifted quite a number of undecideds.

RELATED: "The Immigrant Vote in California."

Marco Rubio Delivers Weekly GOP Address

Via Kim Priestap:

As I've said, we need some Marco Rubios in California.