In an age where a reality TV show gets more votes than a presidential election (OK, American Idol watchers could vote more than once, but you get the point), it's encouraging to know pop culture can still concede to politics.

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MTV decided to move its Video Music Awards up an hour to avoid conflict with Democratic National Convention proceedings, specifically President Obama's acceptance speech because, as Spin's Devon Maloney writes, it "...could cut away a significant chunk of viewership." Says Spin:

The MTV shift, however, is notable because its audience comprises a largely youth-driven demographic, which has long been President Obama's central voting constituency (see: his cool-dad Spotify playlist, his jokes about Jeezy, and of course, his collaboration with the Roots). Obama's ties to the music industry also range from being endorsed by rappers (Jay-Z and Bey have long been welcomed White House guests) to influencing record sales.

Even the NFL has moved its regular-season opener up a day, to Sept. 5., to avoid any conflict.

No one believed the petitions urging Democrats to move their convention out of Charlotte would gain any traction.

Still, North Carolina's adoption of an amendment that asserts marriage between a man and a woman as the only valid domestic legal union must have come as a disappointment, especially since party leaders, such as Los Angeles mayor and convention chairman Antonio Villaraigosa, have been pushing for a platform plank in favor of gay marriage.

When Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican candidate, spoke on the plant floor of Charlotte Pipe and Foundry on Friday, he hammered the Affordable Health Care Act, excessive government and what he called President Obama's "old liberal policies from the past." He promised to get rid of some federal programs and shift others — such as Medicaid, housing vouchers and food stamps — back to state control. While he talked about the importance of innovative American businesses, he didn't link his views on less regulation to the $2 billion trading losses of JP Morgan bank, disclosed this week.

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And he certainly didn't mention this week's adoption of a constitutional amendment that bans same-sex marriage in North Carolina or Obama's endorsement of marriage equality.

That Mitt Romney is having trouble attracting the Hispanic vote is no surprise, even to him.

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During his stop in Charlotte last week, a chorus of young people protested the presumptive GOP nominee's promise to veto the Dream Act.

Will Romney's campaigning with sidekick Marco Rubio, a Florida Senator, and the slight softening of his hard-line stance be enough to sway Hispanic voters in swing states like North Carolina? Not if Hispanic Democratic organizations in the home of the 2012 Democratic convention have any say.

It was a moment of political theater for the Mitt Romney campaign on Wednesday in Charlotte.

The presumptive Republican candidate gave what his campaign called a "prebuttle" close to Bank of America Stadium, where the president will be accepting the Democratic nomination in September. Romney chose the venue wisely, though rain kept the proceedings indoors. Roof with a View was set to hold 100 but filled with at least twice that.

Romney - entering to a soundtrack of Kid Rock's "Born Free" - wore a flag pin as he stood in front of a giant American flag and spoke at a lectern labeled "Obama isn't working." He quoted lines from the president's 2008 Denver speech, pronouncing each promise a failure and concluding that Obama "is over his head and swimming in the wrong direction." (Romney squeezed this open-to-the-media appearance between two closed North Carolina fundraisers, one at a Raleigh restaurant and the other at Myers Park Country Club.)

In the Washington Post, I wrote about the approval of the crowd - cries of "Mitt! Mitt!" filled the air - and the support of many women in the crowd who feel Romney is not really as conservative as his primary rhetoric.

But there were also protesters, including Ron Paul supporters, who also kept vigil outside the Myers Park Country Club, and activists who disapprove of the company Romney keeps on immigration reform and his promise to veto the Dream Act if elected. The act provides a path to permanent residency for undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as minors if they serve in the military or complete college.

With a focus on in-state tuition for undocumented residents, Moises Serrano, 22, of the grassroots group El Cambio, and others traveled from Yadkin County to attend the Romney rally. Serrano's parents brought him to the U.S. when he was 18 months old.

"I want to hold Romney accountable," he said, for the conservative positions the candidate took in the primary season. Despite Romney's appointment of Hispanic outreach officials, particularly in swing states, "he does not have the Latino vote for North Carolina," Serrano said. Though he embraced his support in the past, Romney has started to back away from Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state and architect of Arizona's strict immigration law. "It's a political ploy," Serrano said, "a tactic."

Giovanna Hurtado, 22, said it's important for young undocumented immigrants to step out of the shadows and give a human face to a contentious issue. "If he vetoes or wants to veto the Dream Act," she said, "the Latino vote will veto Romney."

Earlier on Wednesday, in a conference call that might be called a prebuttal to Romney's prebuttal, Democratic N.C. Sen. Kay Hagan praised the progress under the president's economic policies. She also said the president "believes in a country where women are given equal pay for equal work." Hagan reminded reporters that almost every Republican in Congress voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the first bill the president signed into law, and that when asked, Romney would not say whether he would have voted for it.

Congressman Mel Watt, also on the call, said he was "especially incensed" that Mitt Romney was making "this mock speech in my congressional district." He challenged Romney to release his tax records and specifics of what he would do as president. "It's time for him to come clean," Watt said.

The president returns to North Carolina, according to the White House, in a Tuesday trip to the Research Triangle Park. In the continuing quest for control of the 15 electoral votes in this swing state, expect to see and hear from both candidates in the months leading up to November.

Watch Romney discuss immigration in a 2007 interview with "Meet the Press."

Mary C. Curtis, an award-winning Charlotte, N.C.-based journalist, is a contributor to The Washington Post's "She the People" blog, The Root, NPR and the Nieman Watchdog blog. Her "Keeping It Positive" segment airs Wednesdays at 7:10 a.m. on Fox News Rising Charlotte, and she was national correspondent for Politics Daily. Follow her on Twitter.

A coalition of about 60 local and national organizations that represents workers, students, immigrants, unions and homeowners announced about 10,000 of its members will demonstrate at the Democratic National Convention. There's just one problem: The city hasn't given it permission.

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• About 12 members of the Coalition to Protest at the DNC announced their intent to bring the noise Sunday, Sept. 2 - regardless of whether the city permits them to. About 10,000 members, the Coalition estimates, will protest against the dangerous foreclosure practices of big banks, including Charlotte's brightest star, Bank of America Corp.; North Carolina's treatment of unions; and environmental and immigrant issues.

Young people walk into a bar - not exactly an unusual occurrence. But a gathering at Fitzgerald's Irish Pub Thursday night was about more than partying. If you listened carefully you could make out the message over the barroom din.

Get these two guys together and the compliments fly.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, on Mayor Anthony Foxx and the city of Charlotte: "It's great visiting cities like this one. ... The first thing I mentioned to Mayor Foxx, 'Wow. I love these trees. I wish we had more of them.' ... There's a vitality and energy about this state, particularly about this city that I know makes Mayor Foxx proud."

• Duuuuude.

• Bro!

Foxx, on Villaraigosa: "I've known him for quite awhile." As they work together on the convention, they can show "what makes Charlotte special," a "continuing drive to make tomorrows better than yesterdays."

Villaraigosa, in turn: "This is a place where they're working on tomorrow."

Villaraigosa is president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, so there's a reason the two are on the same wavelength. Another, of course, is the Democratic National Convention. This week was Villaraigosa's first visit to Charlotte since being nominated as convention chair (technically, delegates vote on it at the opening session). On Tuesday, he toured the Charlotte Convention Center, along with Foxx, convention CEO Steve Kerrigan and Comelia Sanford, director of convention center operations for the DNCC, inspecting the space that will be used for meetings, the media and other special events.

In a brief press conference before they left for more meetings and a tour of Time Warner Cable Arena, Villaraigosa took questions on everything from North Carolina's upcoming vote on same-sex marriage to his time as a teenage union organizer.

Villaraigosa, who has backed a gay marriage legalization plank in the Democratic Party platform, said on Tuesday that he "believed strongly in marriage equality." But he said he would leave the matter to the delegates and platform committee, which he chaired at the 2004 convention in Boston. "We have a process for that."

Villaraigosa agreed with Obama's opposition to an attempt to define marriage between one man and one woman as the only "domestic legal union" in North Carolina. "We shouldn't enshrine discrimination in our constitution," state or federal, he said. He added, though, that it's up to the people of North Carolina. "We all respect the people of this state; they're the ones who will ultimately make that decision."

Villaraigosa met earlier on Tuesday with members of the Spanish-language media. As the mayor of a city where 140 countries are represented and 200 languages are spoken, Villaraigosa placed the importance of the Latino vote into the context of the Democratic Party's constituencies among "a broad cross-section of America we want to speak to."

On a question about his roots as a 15-year-old supporter of farm-worker boycotts, Villaraigosa ("I never worked in the field; I saw the conditions of those workers in the field") pointed to comments by union leaders opposed to his recent pension-reform proposals as proof that he takes criticism from the right and the left. As reported in the Los Angeles Times, the mayor's trips outside the state have come in for union criticism, as well.

Villaraigosa, who was headed back to Los Angeles for a Tuesday night event, arrived in Charlotte on Monday. He toured Bank of America stadium, where Obama will speak on the convention's closing night, had dinner with Foxx, Kerrigan and staffers at Harvest Moon Grille, and went on an uptown walking tour, where presumably he saw more of those trees. He was last in Charlotte 12 years ago.

He praised the city and state for being "ahead of the curve" in efforts to reduce carbon gases and conserve energy. "I intend to try to replicate it," Villaraigosa said, though he joked that North Carolina and Charlotte might not get the credit.

Mary C. Curtis, an award-winning Charlotte, N.C.-based journalist, is a contributor to The Washington Post's "She the People" blog, The Root, NPR and the Nieman Watchdog blog. Her "Keeping It Positive" segment airs Wednesdays at 7:10 a.m. on Fox News Rising Charlotte, and she was national correspondent for Politics Daily. Follow her on Twitter

Now we know who scored one of the biggest contracts of the Democratic National Convention, worth more than $3 million for transportation management. But there are still sub-contracting and employment opportunities for Charlotte residents and businesses. That's according to the Democratic National Convention Committee, the Committee for Charlotte 2012 and contract-winner representatives who, on Wednesday, rolled up to Bank of America Stadium on a bus. Literal, but effective.