Has Barack Obama ensured his own defeat in 2012 by naming Judd Gregg to head the Commerce Department

You could make that argument, given Gregg's history of opposing funding for the census -- which is next to be done in 2012 and the role of the census in allocating federal funding to states and configuring Congressional distribution:

It seems safe to say that the 2010 census was not weighing on the president’s mind, though it should have been.

The Census Bureau is a major agency within the Commerce Department, and the decennial census — the next one is in 2010 — is a mammoth undertaking. After years of mismanagement and underfinancing by the Bush administration, the bureau is so ill prepared to conduct next year’s count that Congressional investigators have warned that it is at high risk of failure unless corrective action is taken immediately.

Mr. Gregg was never a friend of the census. As chairman of the Senate committee that oversees the Commerce Department’s budget, he frequently tried to cut the bureau’s financing. In 1999, he opposed emergency funds for the 2000 census requested by President Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled House.

The census is used to allocate federal aid to states and draw electoral districts. Given all that, one would think that the White House would be paying more attention. It isn’t.

Perhaps Rahm Emanuel is just trying to make Tim Kaine's job easier. We already know what Emanuel thinks about the 50-state strategy. If Gregg succeeds in gutting the census, perhaps Kaine will have fewer "sure-win" districts in 2010 in which to focus his efforts.