The Revolt Of The Septuagenarians

Ezra Klein had a column in the Washington Post over the weekend explaining why senior citizens, who favor Medicare, oppose a government-run health insurance program for people other than them. They think Medicare will be diluted by expansion and reform. That's a fairly simple "I got mine" theory of why seniors don't support health care reform. I don't necessarily think of Grandma as a selfish bastard, however. They are as caring and compassionate as anyone else on this rock we call home. They may fear the rug being pulled out from their coverage - and on this, Democrats haven't made the sell about how seniors stand to gain big from reform, particularly through lower prescription drug spending - but I think a simple campaign showing how the grandkids won't have any hope of getting medical care under the status quo would theoretically undermine the selfishness argument. And AARP has been making their own sell to seniors. I think Klein's secondary point hits the mark a little more:

Seniors are also the most conservative segment of the population and are getting more so. They constitute not only the sole age group that Obama lost in last year's election, but also the sole age group in which his results were worse than those of John Kerry in 2004. And both Obama and Kerry underperformed Al Gore's 2000 results.

"The Roosevelt seniors are being replaced by the Reagan seniors," says Paul Begala, who helped run Clinton's 1992 campaign. A May poll by the Pew Research Center found that for the first time in 20 years, the GOP is now an older party than the Democrats.

The June Post-ABC poll asked whether respondents would prefer a smaller government with fewer services or a larger government with more services. Seventy percent of seniors -- the segment of the population with government-run health care and a government pension, also known as Social Security -- preferred a smaller government, compared with 37 percent of people 18 to 29. Seniors are the age group most solidly opposed to the public option. In fact, in the August Post-ABC poll, they were the only age group in which a majority opposed it. "Seniors are like the American West," says Julian Zelizer, a Princeton historian. "They depend on government and then say they hate it."

The age divide has animated most of the anger in town hall meetings and tea parties, which is not about health care reform but about Obama. He had a similar problem attracting senior support during the Democratic primary. Seniors as a demographic are simply more easily targeted by smear campaigns from the right, and more receptive to them. Nobody wants to talk about the role of race in all this, but I don't think it's hard to figure it out. Fear of a black President still runs deep over a generation that's more conservative in their thinking. I think Matt Bai is correct to look on the bright side:

The good news for Obama and his party, of course, is that they still enjoy an enviable level of support among voters just breaking into the work force and among those now drifting into middle age. And that means that if reigning Democrats can manage to get health care policy right this time, and maybe even add some fundamental energy reforms, they might still be able to cement more hopeful attitudes about government for generations to come, much as Roosevelt did in his day. Today’s younger voters might never be as party-affiliated as their grandparents were, but neither may they turn out to be as cynical about their leaders as their parents often seem to be. If the president has his way (which is to say, if the worst nightmares of Republicans come to pass), those voters may someday live out their retirements in Arizona or Nevada, spinning stories for their grandchildren of the days when Barack Obama was twice elected president, when government managed once again to make things better instead of worse and when politicians still bothered with these things called town halls.

But it's going to be a hard slog, because of the people who most commonly vote in elections, particularly midterm elections, today.

The Demographic Futility Of The Birther Argument

It's true that Republicans have circled the wagons on the Birthers, and have begun to smack down on those questioning the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate and the whereabouts of his birth. But that doesn't really matter by now. It's "out there" and it's a powerful tool to designate the President as alien, the other, somehow unfit for the office of the Presidency, without the credentials to serve. That's the undercurrent to this, and I can quote The Poor Man Institute on this:

Lee Atwater on the crushing weight of political correctness and how it put a crimp in Republican Party messaging efforts:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

As always, necessity is the mother of invention. And hate springs eternal. And so on.

So in 2009, you say stuff like “where’s your birth certificate”? to the black guy with the funny name – no surprise that Andrew “Bell Curve” Sullivan and Lou “Dirty Meckscuns” Dobbs* are all over it. Pure coincidence, I’m sure. Though to be fair to Andy, he usually shows the same zeal if there’s misogyny* to partake in.

That's really it. And it is really done to reinforce this notion that the alien and the other are taking your money and using it for themselves. Conservatives think this is the way they can win the day, through tribal identification. And it works in the short-term. But the long-term demographic trends cut hard against their success in this matter. Right now we have an economic problem which will determine the course for Democrats in the near term. In the long-term, tribal appeals to racial solidarity will fall flat on their face.

...for those who want to believe that the fact we elected a biracial man to the Presidency means that racism has ended as a concern in the United States, I submit:

IT MAY BE the ultimate indignity.

Lawrence "Lonnie" Powell, 58, a semiskilled laborer at the city's Northwest Transfer Station, in Roxborough, said that since he began working at the trash-handling plant in 2003 he has had to seek the superintendent's permission to go to the bathroom — then descend five flights of stairs to use it.

Powell, who is black, said that white employees have been permitted to use a bathroom just 25 feet from his work station.

"On several occasions I've actually defecated on myself, trying to get down to the bathroom," said Powell, who operates a machine that packs trash into tractor-trailers to be taken to landfills.

Powell is one of five current and former employees, all in their 50s, who allege, in legal documents and interviews with the Daily News, that the station's white superintendent has discriminated against them because they are black.

This is in the same city where black children were asked to leave a white country club swimming pool a few weeks back.

More On The Mandate

Bob Borosage is making the right noises and providing at least some counterweight in the "what does Barack Obama's election mean?" tug-of-war.

The scope of the victory itself reflects the desire for change. Obama’s historic and unlikely candidacy won a majority of the vote, the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter to accomplish that. Democrats in the House and the Senate gained seats in back-to-back elections for the first time since the Great Depression.

The repudiation of George Bush and the Republican Congress and the conservatism they championed is clear.

But what marks this as a sea change election is the consolidation of a new majority coalition, and the mandate provided for progressive reform for Obama and Democrats. Republicans emerge from this election as an aging, monochromatic, largely regional party, increasingly in the grip of its evangelical base. Democrats are consolidating a governing majority in what is, increasingly, a center-left nation.

I think that note about demographics is important. While it's true that every subgroup contributed to the victory at pretty much equal levels, the emergence of a durable Democratic majority did take hold in this election.

Roughly 60% of all Democratic voters are now non-white and / or non-Christian (per exit polls).

Democrats hold a 3-1 margin among non-whites and / or non-Christians (per exit polls)

Non-whites and / or non-Christians now compose 39% of the electorate, their highest total ever (per exit polls)

Over 60% of the country under the age of 43 is non-white and / or non-Christian (Source). Many commenters will justifiably ogle the huge, pro-Obama youth vote this year, but really the non-white and / or non-Christian vote are deeply intertwined.

Over 100% of the population growth in America comes from non-whites and / non-Christians. That is, the white Christian population in America is actually slowly declining, even though the population of the country is still increasing on right pace with average world population growth. (Source) [...]

In this context, Obama’s victory should not be seen as a historical fluke created by the confluence of disastrous Republican governing, a 2004 Illinois Senate field that collapsed around him, and a great speech at the Democratic convention four years ago. It is, instead, a harbinger of America’s future.

Just as Obama made major gains among the non-white and non-Christian, and the very fact of his reflection of the coalition suggests he has a stranglehold on those voters. But he could easily lose them if he doesn't stand for the agenda of the coalition. If he answers David Brooks' dreams and governs like a 1960s moderate Republican, that coalition will fray. Which is why combating the "center-right" myth is so important. Borosage continues:

Not surprisingly, the economy was the overwhelming priority of voters. Nothing else really came close. The argument about the economy – about what Obama described as the “failed philosophy” of trickle-down economics, or what McCain described as a choice between economic growth and socialist redistribution – was the center of the debate between these candidates.

Obama’s agenda was grounded on issues that were championed by progressives: Investment in new energy and conservation as a jobs and growth agenda. Affordable health care for all paid for by raising taxes on the affluent. Investment in education and infrastructure. Empowering workers to organize through passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. Holding corporations and banks more accountable. Ending the war in Iraq. Promising no more NAFTA-type trade agreements, and to repeal tax breaks for companies moving jobs abroad.

McCain largely defended the verities of Reagan era conservatism, founding his campaign on more tax cuts, on freezing spending and stopping earmarks, and continuing corporate trade policies. His health care plan featured a tax credit for those negotiating their own plan. He favored Bush’s privatization of Social Security. He began the election committed to less regulation, but adjusted as the unregulated shadow banking system collapsed. The maverick stayed true to the core of the conservative agenda.

Obama won by large margins over McCain on every economic issue. On the economy generally, 51-38. On education, health care, the financial crisis, the energy crisis, Medicare and Social Security. He even won the debate about taxes 51-42.
When asked why they voted for Obama, the leading reasons were his proposals for withdrawing troops from Iraq, cutting middle class taxes first, providing affordable health care, and his commitment to invest in education and make college more affordable. When those who voted for Obama were asked about their doubts about McCain, picking Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin led the list, but fear that he would give tax breaks to the rich and big corporations came in second, followed by the notion that he would continue Bush’s policies.

On every substantive issue - trade, Social Security, health care, foreign policy, taxes - voters preferred the Obama position to the McCain position. And we finally had an election where those issues mattered.

As I said earlier this week, Obama will have success if he improves the lives of the American people, and in our current dire environment, that means going big and creating what Paul Krugman calls the "new new deal":

. . . Mr. Obama ran on a platform of guaranteed health care and tax breaks for the middle class, paid for with higher taxes on the affluent. John McCain denounced his opponent as a socialist and a "redistributor," but America voted for him anyway. That's a real mandate.

What about the argument that the economic crisis will make a progressive agenda unaffordable?

Well, there's no question that fighting the crisis will cost a lot of money. . . .

But standard textbook economics says that it's O.K., in fact appropriate, to run temporary deficits in the face of a depressed economy. Meanwhile, one or two years of red ink, while it would add modestly to future federal interest expenses, shouldn't stand in the way of a health care plan that, even if quickly enacted into law, probably wouldn't take effect until 2011.. . .

But it would be fair for the new administration to point out how conservative ideology, the belief that greed is always good, helped create this crisis. What F.D.R. said in his second inaugural address — "We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics" — has never rung truer.

And right now happens to be one of those times when the converse is also true, and good morals are good economics. Helping the neediest in a time of crisis, through expanded health and unemployment benefits, is the morally right thing to do; it's also a far more effective form of economic stimulus than cutting the capital gains tax. Providing aid to beleaguered state and local governments, so that they can sustain essential public services, is important for those who depend on those services; it's also a way to avoid job losses and limit the depth of the economy's slump.

So a serious progressive agenda — call it a new New Deal — isn't just economically possible, it's exactly what the economy needs.

The bottom line, then, is that Barack Obama shouldn't listen to the people trying to scare him into being a do-nothing president. He has the political mandate; he has good economics on his side. You might say that the only thing he has to fear is fear itself.

As Senator-Elect Jeff Merkley said yesterday, George Bush claimed a mandate without even winning the popular vote. Obama should clearly be able to do the same. But more important, he should match his agenda to the political necessities, not some fanciful notion of how fast or slow you have to press forward, determined by elite gatekeepers with a fetish for the status quo.

6 Days To Primary Day - Run Everywhere

With a week out until the June 3rd primary, I thought I'd do a series of posts on the Congressional, legislative, local lawmaker, and ballot races we'll see up for grabs. This is a little more of a forward-thinking post, but it'll provide a good baseline for what to watch on Tuesday.

Nick Beaudrot at Cogitamus Blog did a fascinating set of calculations looking at Republican-held seats and, through demographic numbers, coming up with a reasonable baseline expectation of Barack Obama's general election support. There is a set for open seats and a set for seats held by incumbents. And the numbers are really fascinating. Nick explains his methodology and what the chart means:

I've attempted to build a very crude estimate of Barack Obama's performance on a district-by-district basis. I've given him 95% of the black vote, 60% of the Hispanic vote, 55% of the college white vote, and 35% of the non-college white vote. This gives him 43% of the overall white-plus-Asian/other vote, and just over 50% nationwide. I've then assumed that Black voters and Latino voters exhibit uniform voting patterns, and then computed the Partisan Voting Index among white voters to arrive at a number for Obama in the district. This has obvious problems in districts that have a large number of illegal immigrants from Latin America, or in the three Cuban districts, but we can use some common sense to throw out these outliers.

Anywhere that Obama gets 45% of the vote or more, a strong local challenger has a shot at winning the district, especially if it's an open seat.

We have SEVERAL challengers in that range in California.

First the bad news. In the two open-seat races in California the numbers are pretty grim. CA-52 (Hunter) is sitting at 43.3%, and CA-04 (Doolittle) is at 39.9%. Of course, we have an exceptional candidate in CA-04 with Charlie Brown, and a brutal primary on the other side (Pete Wilson just savaged Tom McClintock on behalf of Doug Ose - it's a bloodbath). So I still believe Brown can outperform Obama's expected numbers.

The good news comes in the incumbent races. Here's the breakdown:

# District PVI Incumbent %AA %Hisp NHW BA WhitePVI Obama%
28 CA-50 -5 Bilbray 1.6% 18.7% 54.6% 40.6% 49.0%
.
29 CA-26 -4 Dreier 4.3% 24.7% 48.6% 38.4% 48.9%
.
40 CA-48 -8 Campbell 1.8% 14.5% 62.9% 37.9% 47.6%
.
43 CA-46 -6 Rohrbacher 1.7% 16.1% 49.9% 39.9% 47.3%
.
44 CA-45 -3 Bono 6.0% 35.3% 30.0% 34.8% 47.3%
.
45 CA-24 -5 Gallegly 1.8% 23.4% 43.8% 39.2% 47.2%
.
57 CA-44 -6 Calvert 5.0% 37.4% 40.6% 29.6% 45.5%
.
61 CA-40 -8 Royce 2.2% 27.9% 46.2% 33.3% 44.4%
.
62 CA-3 -7 Lungren 5.4% 11.8% 36.6% 37.5% 44.4%
.
66 CA-25 -7 McKeon 8.8% 31.3% 33.0% 27.3% 43.8%
.
74 CA-42 -10 Miller 3.7% 23.8% 50.6% 30.9% 43.2%
.
84 CA-41 -9 Lewis 5.4% 28.6% 28.0% 28.8% 41.0%
.
90 CA-49 -10 Issa 4.6% 30.0% 32.8% 27.3% 40.6%
.
93 CA-19 -10 Radanovich 3.2% 29.7% 31.5% 28.8% 40.4% (no 2008 challenger)
.
122 CA-21 -13 Nunes 2.4% 42.4% 31.4% 17.0% 37.3%
.
127 CA-2 -13 Herger 0.0% 14.2% 28.7% 33.2% 36.8%
.
142 CA-22 -16 McCarthy 5.6% 23.2% 30.8% 21.1% 34.4% (no 2008 challenger)

So that's seven districts over the "Obama number" of 45%, where a strong local challenger can win the district, and two others just under it. And in the case of CA-50 and CA-26, that number is extremely close to 50%. Remember, these are Republican districts that would be expected to vote heavily Republican in a general election.

Obviously, Nick's caveat about undocumented immigrants applies in a number of these districts. Still, you have seats like CA-48 (amazing!) and CA-44, and even Ed Royce's seat in CA-40, where a strong challenger with a good message and some ready cash can actually do wonders. In the case of CA-48, CA-26 and CA-50, it looks like the education level of whites is driving those seats closer to the Obama camp.

What to look for on election night is how these top 9 districts are behaving. The analysis is crude and doesn't take into account new voters that might change the PVI numbers. If more Democrats are voting than Republicans in the June election in some of these seats, it's a pretty powerful signal that they're in play (allowing of course for the fact that there are primaries on only one side).

On To Pennsylvania

With Mississippi in the books, and a long six weeks to Pennsylvania, I wanted to try and give the benefit of my experience. I was born in Philadelphia, and was raised from the age of two in the swing battleground of Bucks County. My dad's whole family is in Northeast Philly, and my mom was brought up in the steel town of Johnstown, in western Pennsylvania. Some of her family are still there. And I lived briefly in Honesdale (Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area). I haven't lived in PA in a while, but I think I have a little insight.

First, it's clear that the organization is already deep with six weeks out. Democrats have registered 65,000 new voters in the last few months (Republicans have registered, um, 3,000). This doesn't surprise me at all. The last time I checked Barack Obama's Pennsylvania events list, there were at least 30 registration drives going on just last Saturday alone, and there are double that amount today. Pennsylvania has a closed primary, but voters have until March 24 to register, so the election truly can be won or lost in the next couple weeks. And the interest is there.

An onslaught of queries about registering to vote in Pennsylvania swamped suburban election boards yesterday as the nation's attention turned to the state's April 22 Democratic primary to settle a nomination fight that Texas and Ohio could not.

"The phone's been ringing off the hook," said Patti Allen, assistant director of the Montgomery County Board of Elections [...]

Another quick measure: Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's campaign picked up 5,000 new-voter registration cards in Delaware County yesterday, Chief Clerk Mary Jo Headley said.

In a matter of hours, the coming primary registered as a seismic event in the years-in-the-making trend of the suburbs' edging closer to political parity.

Yesterday afternoon, Montgomery County's voter rolls lost 79 Republican registrants and gained 48 Democratic ones, further narrowing the registration gap there to about 21,600, less than 5 percent of the county's total.

That gap had been 30,000 in November and was more than 23,000 on Friday.

"Even before we realized that we're the game in many ways, it was clear that there was a tremendous amount of enthusiasm," Montgomery County Democratic chair Marcel Groen said.

In solidly Republican Chester County, Democrats are also making inroads. Since November, Democrats have registered more than 5,600 new voters, Republicans just 1,369.

It's clear that the Philly suburbs where I am from are going to be a battleground. Montgomery, Delaware, and particularly Bucks Counties will be crucial. My parents (who support Hillary) have already been called twice by the Obama campaign just for supporter ID, and Obama's first visit to the state was a windmill plant in Fairless Hills in Bucks County (Clinton has been in the area as well). Patrick Murphy, who represents PA-08 in Bucks, is the state chairman. There's no question that Bucks County is ground zero for the campaign. And that makes a lot of sense. Bucks is a middle- to upper-middle-class area, and it's actually a bedroom community for New York City to some extent. My dad commuted to New York via nearby Trenton for 15 years, along with thousands of others in the garment and financial services industries. Because of housing affordability and schools, it's become an option for lots of people. The Bucks suburbs have slowly grown out, from the older and more culturally diverse suburbs like Bensalem, out to the frontier suburb where my parents currently live (there were 3 African-Americans in my high school graduating class of 800).

Obviously, Philadelphia proper, which is 46% black, is going to be a key for the Obama campaign, although his courtesy endorsement of Chaka Fattah in the Philly mayoral race, which caused the eventual winner Michael Nutter to endorse and campaign hard for Clinton, will make it a challenge. I don't think that the ward leaders are going to play a significant part in turnout, however; the campaigns have shown the ability to get out their voters, and Philly isn't the political machine that it once was. Philly does have a significant bohemian Brooklyn expat population and arts community, so take that information and do what you will with it. I also do think that Geraldine Ferraro's intemperate remarks may be used as an Archie Bunker strategy in the more white ethnic areas of Philly, although I agree with Kevin Drum that if Ferraro really wanted to use this as a dog whistle, she could have done better than giving her remarks to the Torrance Daily Breeze. Still, Will Bunch's remarks make a lot of sense to me:

Intentionally or not, "Archie Bunker's congresswoman" was relaying the exact message that the Clinton campaign really wants out there, not in Torrence, Calif., or back in Queens but right here in Pennsylvania, in the mostly white rowhouse "river wards" of Philadelphia and a lot of working class burgs, from Scranton all the way down to the former steel towns of the Mon Valley.

Why do you think Clinton has distanced herself from the remark, but not so much really? And why do you think Geraldine Ferraro herself has been neither rejected nor denounced by the Clinton campaign?

Think of it this way. It was easy for Obama to reject and denounce an out-there hatemonger like Louis Farrakhan, and it should have been easy for John McCain to fully reject and denounce anti-Catholic whack job John Hagee (why he hasn't is mindboggling). But the Clinton campaign can't reject and denounce Geraldine Ferraro, because it would be rejecting and denouncing itself.

A sculptor brought in to mold a Hillary Clinton voter would have crafted Geraldine Ferraro from scratch. She's 72 years old now. White. Female. Ethnic. Catholic. Emotionally vested in the idea that a woman should become president in her lifetime. Hailing from the community that was once the face of white middle-class America. Got where she was with the enthusiastic backing of New York big labor. Has views on the role of race in American politics that aren't exactly ready for prime time, but well, hey, once they get out there you can't really put the genie back in the bottle, now can you? [...]

So exactly how many blue-collar whites in Pennsylvania still hold views on race and politics that are similar to a fictional TV character from the 1970s? Certainly not all of them, and hopefully not most of them, but most likely some of them -- and in the end that's not exactly what matters anyway.

It's very true that there's a long history of racial tension in Philadelphia politics, and while this is changing, I have to ashamedly admit that members of my own family aren't very likely to vote for the schvartze. There are also those blue-collar whites who simply value experience and appreciated Bill Clinton's achievements in the 90s. Clinton has a base and that does not solely consist of "not-Obama". And a lot of that base is in Pennsylvania, particularly in the Scranton area and in the west-central part of the state. It doesn't surprise me that Bill Clinton is spending today in Erie and Johnstown. Johnstown is a very old, depressed, former steel town that now has little more than a health care industry serving its own citizens. The economy hasn't been good in 30 years. This is Jack Murtha country, and were he to endorse there could be a sea change here, but I'd say Clinton would be wise to park in areas like this and run up the score. However, I submit this anecdotal and unscientific survey: my 84 year-old grandmother is undecided and that floors me.

However, I wouldn't overestimate the strength of Clinton in the middle of the state. When Obama had time to campaign all over in Iowa, he was able to receive votes there. The area is demographically similar to Ohio, but the economic picture is different. The economy crashed 30 years ago with the collapse of textiles (SE PA) and steel (western PA). The transition has been bumpy, but health care is now a dominant industry, one that a good bit of my family works in. Many areas are still very depressed, so the economy is still an issue, but it's a needle you have to thread because the state is pretty diverse on this score.

Half the state's delegates are coming from the Philadelphia area, that's the other issue. The middle of the state does not have a ton of Democrats.

The other issue is that there are dozens of little university towns in Pennsylvania. Slippery Rock, Lock Haven, West Chester, Shippensburg, Indiana, Bucknell, Lehigh, Lafayette, Muhlenberg, Misericordia, Dickinson, Edinboro, Swarthmore, U. of Scranton, Moravian, Widener and I won't even get into all the colleges in Philly and Pittsburgh. Lots and lots of colleges. The voter registration drives should be on all of these campuses and in full force. Not to mention the big college town of State College, home to Penn State and a big Obama rally tomorrow.

Terrypinder has some other really good stuff. Northeastern PA is a New York City exurb and in some places even a suburb of Binghamton. Parts of that area are summer camp communities that will be deserted in April. You have parts of South-Central PA that are closely connected to Baltimore and Hagerstown and Washington DC.

So, my word of advice for the Obama camp would be to hit every college, park it in Bucks County and the ring suburbs of Philly, make sure you're getting out the vote in the urban centers and don't overlook the power of smaller events in the rural areas. There's enough time to do that. My advice to the Clinton camp is to work Delaware and Chester Counties hard, get as much out of Northeast and South Philadelphia as possible, make contact in Johnstown and Allentown and all the more economically disadvantaged areas and try for 70% in Scranton and the environs. It's clear that the optics favor Hillary - she's got a baseline lead of 19 points - but I expect this to end up being close.

Population Shifts and Central Valley Politics

Let's face it. Politics in California in general are heavily tilted to the large population centers in the Bay Area and Southern California (including Orange County and down to San Diego). But to continue in this fashion would be shortsighted, because it's clear that the population patterns are moving away from two all-powerful hubs and toward a more widely spread pattern. What has been getting most of the ink from the recent study by the state Department of Finance is that the Inland Empire will soon become home to the second-largest county (Riverside) in all of California. But what has been less remarked upon is the expansion of the Central Valley:

With a new state forecast predicting that California's population growth will tilt ever more toward the Central Valley, Southern California's Inland Empire and fast-growing areas around Sacramento, experts say the state's political center of gravity may shift, too - away from the more urbanized, coastal metropolitan areas that dominate the state's political and economic life today.

The Central Valley "will clearly gain heft compared with the other metropolitan regions," said Carol Whiteside, president of the Great Valley Center and the former mayor of Modesto. "It won't be the baby cousin any more."

The Central Valley will grow from 10 percent of the state's population in 2000, to 16 percent of all Californians by 2050. The Bay Area is projected to gain about 3.5 million new residents by 2050, but its share of California's population will drop to 17 percent, from 20 percent in 2000, an analysis of new state Department of Finance projections shows.

This is something important for political groups to internalize. The traditional structure of Democratic election efforts has been to raise turnout in LA and SF, and hope to do half-decent everywhere else, and walk away a winner. That's not going to work as we go forward. With 1 in 6 Californians living in places like Modesto and Fresno and Stockton and Bakersfield and Merced and the numerous towns throughout the San Joaquin Valley, Democrats must build and grow their presence outside of the urban metropolises, to a level where they were in the recent past before giving up practically all of that ground to the Republicans.

Here's the spread of population in 2000:

Coastal Southern California: 47%
Bay Area: 20%
Central Valley: 10%
Inland Empire: 10%
Other (High Desert, Sierras): 13%

Here's the projections for 2050:

Coastal Southern California: 39%
Bay Area: 17%
Central Valley: 16%
Inland Empire: 14% (3x the size in 50 years!)
Other (High Desert, Sierras): 14%

The "big 2" go from 67% of the population to 56%. That's significant in a statewide election. It will also likely affect reapportionment, with the Bay Area potentially losing seats in Congress or the state legislature as early as the 2010 Census.

We have to start thinking about this and planning now. What are the concerns of the Central Valley? Obviously agriculture and water concerns would weigh heavily, one would think, but the Valley is also urbanizing and developing rapidly. These aren't all cow towns anymore; there are at least 5 cities with over 100,000 inhabitants. The San Joaquin Valley is also the primary oil-producing region in our state. Culturally this is likely to be a more classically Western libertarian area.

We have a 3-2 deficit among the Congressional delegation in this area. Dennis Cardoza and Jim Costa are Democrats, and George Radanovich, Kevin McCarthy and Devin Nunes are Republicans. By 2050 there could be up to 10 seats in this region. Are Cardoza and Costa helping grow the Democratic brand in the Central Valley? Are they promoting policies that can help Democrats win? This is a diverse area as well, with not just Hispanics but lots of Asian and European communities. How are they being served?

I hope people are asking these questions. The Central Valley could hold the key to continued Democratic dominance in California.