The anti-Washington insurgency advances

HAVING covered Washington for several years, I have learnt to treat the conventional wisdom spun by the pundits with some respect but also with scepticism.

The reason for treating what I hear on the television news shows with many grains of salt is that the people who work in this city, including political strategists and media consultants, reside in a bubble and are out-of-touch with the lives of ordinary Americans.

Those who live inside the Beltway - a reference to the areas that lie within the perimeter of the Capital Beltway - examine the real world through a filter, and tend to impose their wishful thinking on that reality.