Demography is DestinyMike Rappaport

Michael Barone explains how population shifts are affecting the American political map.   The whole piece is interesting and not as pessimistic as the discussion of San Diego and similar coastal cities:

Startwith the Coastal Megalopolises: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco,San Diego, Chicago (on the coast of Lake Michigan), Miami, Washingtonand Boston. Here is a pattern you don’t find in other big cities:Americans moving out and immigrants moving in, in very large numbers,with low overall population growth. Los Angeles, defined by the CensusBureau as Los Angeles and Orange Counties, had a domestic outflow of 6%of 2000 population in six years–balanced by an immigrant inflow of 6%.The numbers are the same for these eight metro areas as a whole.

Theresult is that these Coastal Megalopolises are increasingly atwo-tiered society, with large affluent populations happilycontemplating (at least until recently) their rapidly rising housingvalues, and a large, mostly immigrant working class working at lowwages and struggling to move up the economic ladder. The economicdivide in New York and Los Angeles is starting to look like theeconomic divide in Mexico City and São Paulo.