Nation-Building

This is a fascinating map of Federal land ownership percentages by state. I love how the states are rendered to scale to represent the proportion visually. I find the comparison between California and Texas quite interesting as well. For one thing I had no idea so much of CA was federally-owned; likewise I had no idea so little of Texas was. This is probably a reflection of the amount of protected land and natural resources between the two states. I think there's a lot more in Texas that should be protected but probably isn't.

Charles Kuffner takes a look at the Bug Urban and Suburban counties in Texas and sees positive trends that bode well for 2012: The first thing to notice is that what had been an 800,000 vote deficit for John Kerry was this year a 75,000 vote deficit for Barack Obama. McCain lost 80,000 votes from Bush's total, while Obama won 645,000 more votes than Kerry. This 725,000 vote gain by Obama accounts for nearly the entire amount of the pickup from 2004. Maybe you're not ready to call Texas a swing state just yet, but this is a huge step in that direction. The big urbans led the way on this. What had been a 240,000 vote surplus for Bush (I goofed on the math when I first did this) became a 267,000 vote deficit for McCain, or a total turnaround of over a half million votes. Dallas was a 115,000-vote blowout for Obama, who won with 57.5% there. Both Travis and El Paso were at around 65% for Obama, with Travis' margin for Obama (117,000) the biggest of them all, and both Harris...

It's a tight race in Wisconsin but I think Obama will eke out a win here. Given the way the primary mechanics work in Texas , I also think that Obama is going to win there, largely because Clinton's campaign didn't seem to be paying attention (and truthfully never expected to have to fight beyond Super Tuesday). In Ohio, even though the polls show Obama slightly ahead , I still think Hillary has an advantage. Let's see how it all pans out. The chips begin to fall tomorrow.

I usually find OpinionJournal to be too partisan to be of use, but there's pretty solid analysis here of the Texas GOP's woes. Democrats haven't won a statewide contest since 1994, and Republicans hold comfortable majorities in the state House and Senate. Both U.S. senators are Republicans. And even with the loss of two tight congressional races last year, Republicans hold 19 of 32 congressional districts. There are, however, signs of trouble for the GOP. While Gov. Rick Perry won re-election in November, he achieved only a plurality in a four-way race that featured a Democrat and an independent as well as a former Republican turned independent (State Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn). And Republicans lost two heartbreaking races in the past year. Rep. Henry Bonilla, a seven-term incumbent and the only Mexican-American Republican in Congress, lost to Democrat Ciro Rodriguez, who ran a haphazard campaign. George Antuna, a rising star who had worked for Sen. Kay Bailey Hut...