Yes, we do count in census, elections -- April 29, 2021 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Dozens of New Yorkers are probably kicking themselves for not filling out their census forms last year.

The Empire State is losing a congressional seat by 89 people. That’s not a typo.

If the census had counted just 89 more New Yorkers, the state would have retained its 27 seats in Congress, the Census Bureau reported this week.

The once-a-decade census may seem an administrative chore, but it’s in people’s self-interest to participate, even during a pandemic.

The census determines congressional seats for each state by population. It also allocates each state’s share of more than $800 billion in federal funds – your tax money – each year for food stamps, healthcare, housing assistance, job training and other services.

Census numbers are also used to create districts for the U.S. House and state legislatures, which often draw redistricting maps for future elections. The bureau will release detailed numbers this summer to guide redistricting efforts.

So, don’t let anyone tell you it doesn’t matter if you fill out your census form – or if you vote. Elections also are often won – and lost -- on the margins.

A handful of states could have changed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Joe Biden won the White House because he flipped several states Donald Trump won in 2016 – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

In Arizona, Biden won by just under 10,500 votes out of nearly 3.4 million votes cast. Another audit, or recount of votes by hand, began April 23 in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, and is expected to last until May 14.

No widespread election fraud has been found in Arizona or anywhere else, and the audit will not change the outcome of the election there, state officials say. Claims on the Internet that the audit has found 250,000 fraudulent votes are false, according to USA Today factcheckers.

In Georgia, Biden won with about 11,780 more votes than Trump out of 5 million votes cast. Several recounts there confirmed Biden’s win.

We’ll never know for sure how many New Yorkers, or Californians, for that matter, failed to fill out their census forms. California is losing a congressional seat for the first time. Also losing one seat each are Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

The big census winner is Texas, which is gaining two House seats. Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon each gain one seat.

Virginia, where growth slowed over the last decade, held onto its 11 congressional seats.

Since Republicans need a net gain of only five seats to take back control of the U.S. House of Representatives from Democrats in 2022, the census is particularly significant this year.

New York gained population in the last decade, but other states grew at a faster rate, which means the New York delegation will shrink to 26 House seats.

“It’s obviously not desirable, and the last thing we want to do is to lose representation in Washington,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. “So it’s not good news for the state.”

Cuomo is weighing a lawsuit to contest the count, although it’s an uphill fight. New York has sued unsuccessfully in the past over lost congressional seats.

Cuomo’s critics blame him for not doing more to gin up participation in the census during the pandemic. He blames the federal government for a chilling effect on participation.

Hispanic groups believe Hispanics were undercounted in key states like Arizona, Texas and Florida. They contend then-President Donald Trump’s efforts to put a question about respondents’ citizenship on the census discouraged immigrants from participating.

After two dozen states and many cities sued the Census Bureau and Commerce Department, the administration withdrew the question.

The Census Bureau indicated it was confident apportionment numbers were correct. Most states’ official population tallies were within 1 percentage point of independent projections.

It’s too late for the 2020 census, but voters in Virginia will pick a new governor, members of the House of Delegates, mayors and other local officials this November. An independent commission is redrawing state district maps for future elections.

Not only is it in our civic interest to participate in the census and to vote, it’s in our personal interest. Let your voice be heard.

©2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

30

Measure presidential age in ideas, not years -- July 25, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER

How old is too old to be president? Ronald Reagan settled the question 35 years ago with a zinger.

President Reagan, a Republican seeking his second term, and former Vice President Walter Mondale, the Democratic presidential nominee, met Oct. 21, 1984, for their second debate.

Reagan, 73, had not had a good first debate, and veteran Baltimore Sun diplomatic correspondent Henry Trewhitt raised the age issue:

“You already are the oldest president in history. And some of your staff say you were tired after your most recent encounter with Mr. Mondale. I recall yet that President Kennedy had to go for days on end with very little sleep during the Cuban missile crisis. Is there any doubt in your mind that you would be able to function in such circumstances?”

“Not at all, Mr. Trewhitt,” Reagan smoothly replied, “and I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

Everybody broke out laughing, including Mondale, a mere lad of 56.

Mondale told his wife he lost the election that night. There were many reasons Reagan swept to victory, winning every state except Mondale’s Minnesota, but the much replayed “youth and inexperience” soundbite didn’t hurt.

It’s hard to imagine an elder candidate’s snappy comeback line having the same effect ever again, considering what we know now. Five years after leaving office, Reagan wrote a letter telling the world he was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

Critics questioned whether he had been slipping during his second term in the White House, though loyal staff said he showed no signs of dementia.  

Now, President Donald Trump, 73, is the oldest president ever. Age is again a campaign issue as several top Democratic presidential contenders are also septuagenarians. Former Vice President Joe Biden is 76, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is 77 and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is 70.

Critics question Trump’s mental health, although he insists he’s “a very stable genius.”

Attacking Biden, Trump says he himself looks younger and is more mentally sharp than Biden.

For his part, Biden said if Trump doesn’t stop making cracks about his age, he’ll challenge the president to a push-up contest. I’d watch that.

Age inevitably factors into the Democrats’ nomination process. Pete Buttigieg, 37, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, likes to say he won’t reach the age Trump is now until 2054. Former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke, 50, plays up skateboarding. 

If Democrats choose the safe and experienced Biden to go against Trump, Biden will need to project youth and vitality through his appearance and, more importantly, through his ideas.

It’s possible, as Sanders showed in 2016, for a party elder to attract a youthful following with bold, new ideas.

But first Biden must deal with his past, and when the Democrats meet for a second round of debates Tuesday and Wednesday, his record will also be on display.  

In the first debate, Biden seemed flummoxed by the attack by California Sen. Kamala Harris on his opposition to federal busing decades ago. Biden also has been criticized for pushing, as a senator in 1994, a crime bill now seen as draconian.

Setting a new course, Biden Tuesday proposed a sweeping plan to eliminate the death penalty, decriminalize marijuana and stop putting people in prison for drug use alone.

But New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, 50, tweeted: “It’s not enough to tell us what you’re going to do for our communities, show us what you’ve done for the last 40 years. You created this system.”

Sanders and Warren each have plans to erase student debt, which plagues millions of Americans, and provide free higher education.

Such policies are good politics. More younger voters turned out to vote in 2018 than in previous midterms, the Census Bureau reports. In 2020, one in 10 eligible voters will be members of Generation Z – born after 1995, the Pew Research Center projects.  

Young voters tend to vote Democratic. If they turn out strongly, as they have in recent presidential elections, they could make a difference for Democrats.

©2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Trump tweets and plays us `like a Stradivarius' -- July 18, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER

For an apt description of President Donald Trump’s shrewd use of social media, you need look no further than Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, Democrat of Missouri.

“He’s playing us like a Stradivarius,” Cleaver, a United Methodist minister, said Wednesday.

A day earlier, the House voted 240 to 187 to strongly condemn as racist Trump’s tweets aimed at four members of Congress who are women of color. Cleaver had been presiding officer during the acrimonious run-up to the vote.

As Democrats and Republicans feuded, Cleaver grew frustrated, put down the gavel and walked away, abandoning the chair.  

“My suggestion to the House and the Senate and the people of the country is to forget the man’s tweets. . . He knows that there will be a reaction, and he also knows that a portion of his base is OK with him insulting people.” Cleaver said Wednesday on CNN.

We know the pattern. Whenever Trump feels threatened, he goes on the offensive with his Twitter account -- and Democrats reliably take the bait.  

If former special counsel Robert Mueller is scheduled to testify on Capitol Hill about his investigation into Russians helping Trump win in 2016, Trump tweets – and changes the subject. Mueller’s appearance was postponed until July 24.

If the news focuses on deplorable conditions on the border or on a gazillionaire child predator Trump partied with, Trump tweets – and changes the subject.

Outraged Democrats always respond, but should they?  

“He’s going to insult some others, he’s going to speak some untruths and so forth – we need to just let him hang out at the White House and do that,” Cleaver said.

It’s not easy to let a president’s untruths and malicious tone go unchallenged.

Trump claimed falsely the four representatives “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world.” If they didn’t like it here, they should go back where they came from, he said.

The tweets were directed -- not by name -- to freshman Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.

All are fierce Trump critics and American citizens born in the United States -- except for Omar, who was born in Somalia and is a naturalized citizen.

When House Democrats rightly defended their colleagues, Trump triumphantly tweeted: “The Dems were trying to distance themselves from the four `progressives,’ but now they are forced to embrace them. That means they are endorsing Socialism, hate of Israel and the USA! Not good for Democrats!”

That’s absurd, of course, but it’s a sign of what’s ahead. Trump’s strategy is to hurl personal insults and racially infused, “love it or leave it” rhetoric while insisting he’s not racist.

“Those tweets were NOT Racist. I don’t have a Racist bone in my body!” he tweeted.

The House resolution condemning his tweets quoted Presidents Roosevelt, Kennedy and Reagan in praise of immigrants and under House rules avoided calling Trump himself a racist.

And yet 57 percent of Americans think Trump is a racist, a poll conducted last year by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research reported.

His tweets and policies put him on the wrong side of history and demography. The United States is inevitably becoming more diverse.

In 2013 for the first time, most infants under age 1 in the United States were nonwhite, the Census Bureau reported. In 2016, more non-Hispanic whites died than were born in 26 states, an analysis of Census data by the Applied Population Lab at the University of Wisconsin found.

The United States is projected to become majority minority by 2045. That is, blacks, Hispanics, Asians and other minorities will be a majority and whites will be in the minority.

But almost half of white Americans say the country’s becoming majority nonwhite would “weaken American customs and values,” a Pew Research Center survey in March found.

Make no mistake, Trump knows his tweets and anti-immigrant policies tap into and feed those fears about the future.

If Democratic presidential candidates ignore or fail to take the fears seriously while responding to his every hateful tweet, Trump will keep playing us.

©2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

30

New racial reality is transforming America -- Dec. 4, 2014 column

By MARSHA MERCER

The current clash between congressional Republicans and President Barack Obama, while crucial for millions of undocumented immigrants, is also political theater aimed at shoring up Democratic and Republican constituencies.  

But the political debate misses the point. Powerful demographic forces that will transform the country are already in place.    

Regardless of how the latest episode of “Washington on the Brink” ends, sometime between 2040 and 2050 whites will no longer be in the majority in the United States.  That’s a monumental change from 1790 to 1980, when whites made up 80 to 90 percent of the population.

Minorities will have as profound an impact on American society in the 21^st Century as baby boomers did in the 20^th Century, says demographer William H. Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. He looks at the inevitable demographic changes and challenges in his new book, “Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics Are Remaking America.”

It’s not future waves of immigrants who will change the country’s racial makeup, Frey says. Most of the immigration that will shape our future occurred in the 1980s and 1990s.

The shift to a “majority-minority” population will result from births to people who are already here – mostly Hispanics and Asians – and to multiracial births, says Frey, who expects the ranks of Hispanics, Asians and the multiracial population to more than double in the next 40 years.

The country reached a milestone in 2011 when more minority babies than white babies were born. In Texas, New Mexico and California minorities are now in the majority.  Hawaii has never had a white majority, and whites are a minority in the District of Columbia.

This year for the first time, there are more minority students in U.S. elementary and high schools than whites. Multiracial marriages are also proliferating.  About one in seven new marriages is multiracial, including nearly half of those involving Hispanics or Asians.

Racial change has never been easy and older whites may fear losing their majority status, Frey says. But he believes that the shift to a majority-minority population will come “just in time,” as the country copes with a dwindling white population.

Because of low levels of white immigration, reduced fertility and aging, the white population grew a tepid 1.2 percent from 2000 to 2010, Frey says. In 2010, the median age of whites was 42, Asians 35, blacks 32 and Hispanics 27.

“Rather than being feared, America’s new diversity – poised to reinvigorate the country at a time when other developed nations are facing advanced aging and population loss – can be celebrated,” he writes.  

The solvency of Social Security and other retirement programs depends on younger workers’ energizing the economy. Our culture and politics will also change with the influx of new minority voters.

Minorities – defined as everyone but single-race, non-Hispanic whites -- now make up about 37 percent of the population. The Census Bureau projects minorities will be 57 percent in 2060.  

Latinos are the nation’s largest minority group and growing fast. Their political clout has yet to be felt nationally.

More than 25 million Hispanics are eligible voters – that is, citizens over 18 – up from 17.3 million in 2006, the Pew Research Center reports. A larger share are native-born than are naturalized citizens.

Hispanics are moving into areas of the country that previously had few Spanish speakers. Since 2006, the number of Hispanic eligible voters has grown fastest in South Carolina, up 126.2 percent, Tennessee, up 113.7 percent and Alabama, up 110.5 percent, according to Pew.

So far, minorities have overwhelmingly voted Democratic for president. In 2012, Hispanics voted for Obama over Republican Mitt Romney 71 percent to 27 percent. But Hispanics haven’t turned out to vote in rates as high as blacks or whites. 

In 2012, Latinos were 17 percent of the population but 11 percent of eligible voters due to lower median age and lower rates of citizenship and voter registration, Frey’s analysis found.

By 2024, one in three eligible voters will be nonwhite. That’s also the first year Latinos are projected to surpass the share of eligible black voters.

We can see the future – and it looks nothing like the 1950s or even 1980. How we adjust to the new reality will determine our success or failure.

© 2014 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.