Michael Barone on the realignment of America.

HH: Joined now by U.S. News and World Report’s Michael Barone. Michael, always a pleasure to have you here.

HH: Your piece on Opinion Journal today, the Realignment of America, instantly shot around America as political junkees began to read it. And demographics are destiny, and I guess what you’re writing here is that the interior boom towns like Las Vegas and Phoenix and Charlotte and Orlando and Tampa and Jacksonville, is that where the action is, Michael Barone?

MB: Well, it’s where we’re finding big flows of Americans. I mean, I took a look at the Census Bureau 2006 estimates, and compared them with the 2000 Census results, and where we are having what I call domestic inflow and domestic outflow, that is where… immigrant inflow. And what you see, and what I call the interior boom towns, sixteen big metro areas, is that there’s a very big movement into these. Something like four million people have moved into these areas net over the last six years. That’s big, and it’s…and what we see in contrast, those are cities like Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix, et cetera, the Inland Empire of California, Charlotte, Raleigh, Nashville, a different movement in what we call the coastal megalopolises. These are some of our biggest metro areas, for the most part, New York, Los Angeles, which the Census Bureau defines as Los Angeles and Orange County, Chicago, San Francisco, Miami, Washington, Boston, San Diego. Here, you’re seeing large numbers, in most of these areas, large numbers of Americans moving out, large numbers of immigrants moving in. And you’re getting that sort of division between the rich and the poor that the Democrats are always complaining about. Interestingly, these are the areas that are the most Democratic.

HH: I want to quote from one of the closing paragraphs in the Realignment of America from Michael Barone this morning. “What’s now in store is a shifting of political weight from a small rust belt, which leans Democratic, and from the much larger coastal megalopolises, where both secular top earners and immigrant low earners vote heavily Democratic, toward the interior megalopolises, where most voters are private sector religious Republicans, but where significant immigration populations lead to Democrats. House seats and electoral votes will shift from New York, New Jersey and Illinois to Texas, Florida, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. Within California, house seats will shift from the Democratic coasts to the Republican Inland Empire and central valley.” I think this is a cautious bit of good news for Republicans, Michael Barone, but you also seem to have a warning here that just because the population is heading to where they have been dominant in the past, doesn’t mean they’ll be dominant in the future there.

MB: That’s right, and the 2000 election results are a good hint to us that we ought to consider the possibility that areas that are more Republican than average won’t be Republican enough to elect Republicans nationally. That can happen. And I think when we’re looking at those interior boom towns, we’re seeing they’re very big movements of Americans. That tends to produce Republicans. They’re attracted there by the private sector growth. Also a significant movement of immigrants. Now when I’ve looked at Hispanic immigrants in Texas and Florida, in Arizona, what I see out of the exit polls and the area by area election returns, they’re not as heavily Democratic as Hispanics in coastal California, New York City, Chicago. They tend to adapt, perhaps, somewhat to the local terrain. They do on balance, though, vote for the Democrats, so there’s a caution there, saying the interior boom towns are getting bigger, but they may be getting a little less Democratic. And in ’04, the interior boom towns voted 56% for Bush, aggregated together. The coastal megalopolises voted 61% for John Kerry.

HH: Now Michael Barone, if you had to pick one factor, I made a guess that accounts for all of these independent indicators, is it the price of housing?

MB: Well, I think housing prices are one factor. Basically, the middle income is, people are priced out of Los Angeles County, to a considerable extent now. If they want to live on the west side of town, they need to get $1.7 million to buy a little house. Most middle income people can’t afford that. If they want to live in just a $400,000 dollar house, hey, that’s Latino South Central. And generally speaking, they don’t want to live in that kind of area. So what’s the answer? The answer is Las Vegas, the answer is Phoenix.

HH: And do these trends, do you see them accelerating? Or are they fairly constant over the six years you’ve studied?

MB: They’re fairly constant. You can see some evidence of the tech bust, for example, in the fact that there was outflow from Seattle, even though you always hear what a hip city it is, and people love the style. Domestically, there was outflow. More people left than came there. And San Francisco metro area, including the San Jose area, 10% domestic outflow. In other words, a number of people equal to 10% of their 2000 population net left…of Americans, left the San Francisco area.

MB: Now that’s not…they left their heart in San Francisco, but they left it.

HH: Let me ask you, Michael Barone, as we’ve got a minute and a half left, I also want to switch subjects on you. Today is the pub date for Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval That Inspired America’s Founding Fathers, your brand new book on the glorious revolution. Juxtaposed with Elizabeth II’s visit here last night, it’s really remarkable. How goes the rollout? I haven’t seen the book yet, and so I’m waiting to interview you until I’ve actually read it. But are you pleased with the rollout?

MB: Well, I’m pleased so far. You haven’t had, you know, I haven’t been on Katie Couric’s show, although I guess Katie Couric isn’t on it, either, very much. No, this is a book about an event that most Americans today, most educated Americans, really don’t know much about. And yet, it was a giant step forward for guaranteed rights, representative government, global capitalism, and an anti-tyrannical foreign policy, something we’re still involved in today. And it was a remarkable event and an unlikely one, something that really determined much of the shape of the nation, of the world that we live in now, and yet it would have been very easy for it not to happen. And so I think it’s an exciting story, as well as one that’s meaningful, and helps to explain how the world came to be what it is.

HH: I look forward to talking with you about it at length. Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval That Inspired America’s Founding Fathers by Michael Barone, out now, available at Amazon.com. Michael, always a pleasure.

Barone leaves out some important facts which should change his conclusions.

First, he does not account for the impact of amnesty which will add a hispanic voting population equal to that of a megastate like Pennsylvania, mostly to the attractive welfare state Democrati party.

Second, the shift to the interior does not augur as well for Republicans because the hispanic invasion is already flipping formerly Republican leaning states like Virginia, Georgia, Colorado, Idaho, Arizona, and North Carolina.

For example, once solidly red-state Virginia, of which George Bush said that if he lost there he loses big, is now starting to lean more Democrat because of the huge hispanic influx of over 300,000 and growing.

Barone is generally clueless on immigration, so such omissions are not surprising.

What makes him so dangerous is that a lot of Republicans have bought into his fantasies about how today’s immigrant influxes are just like the past ones, and therefore will turn more Republican over time. As far as I know, he’s never even addressed the fact that the last wave came to an end, and that the wave ending was of crucial importance in assimilating them. Yet he continues to make an absurd apples to oranges analysis that doesn’t pass the laugh test.

Sorry, but I didn't get that from his WSJ article. In fact Barone states that as people move from the "normally-Dem" to "normally-Rep" locations, those locations become decreasingly Rep. Two examples come to mind. First the Raleigh-Durham area in a state that went solidly Reagan/BushI/Dole/BushII and Jesse Helms for years. The influx of Dems in the Research Triangle has systematically changed the electorate since 1994. Second, New Hampshire - a reliably Rep state for decades. Large numbers of Mass Dems moved there looking for lower taxes, but didn't change their voting habits and a Republican Senator is now on the endangered species list at a time we can least afford it.

Back to the original point, Barone is warning Republicans you can't continue to rely on the "Solid South".

I’ll give you (and Barone) that. But my issue with him, and his reputation as some brilliant demographic analyst, is that he has regularly pushed a baselessly optimistic view of immigration from a conservative/Republican point of view.

Of course the Yankee influx has changed large parts of North Carolina. Of course NH has been lost largely as a result of liberals moving in from surrounding states. But in other places, especially the Southwest, the biggest demographic problem for the GOP is the influx of immigrants. I’m sorry, but its true. This influx has helped turn Calif solidly blue. It is turning Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado into purple states, and it will turn Texas into a competitive state in time.

If Barone has gotten a clue on all of this, and now admits that Republican’s chances of doing well with immigrants decreases so long as immigration levels remain high, then I’ll praise him for it. But I haven’t seen that from him yet.

>Second, the shift to the interior does not augur as well for Republicans because the hispanic invasion is already flipping formerly Republican leaning states like Virginia, Georgia, Colorado, Idaho, Arizona, and North Carolina.<

Georgia has large numbers of illegals but they are not voting.Georgia is not even close to going back to Democrats.Most of the viable Democrats have become Republicans.Only the nuts are left.

From Barone's article:

There are some variations. New York had a domestic outflow of 8% and an immigrant inflow of 6%; San Francisco a whopping domestic outflow of 10% (the bursting of the tech bubble hurt) and an immigrant inflow of 7%.

I can only speculate that the outflow from San Francisco was due to more than the popping of the tech bubble. That played no small part I am sure, but what about...well, San Francisco's status as a People's Republic?

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