More on the Beltway Bubble

The growing refrain these days, especially in the Liberal Blogosphere is that the Washington media and political elite just don't get it. Either they can't or don't want to see the reality of 99% of America. Dan Froomkin has written about this in recent posts on the Washington Post's White House Watch: Washington vs. the Rest of America and Obama: I Won't Play Washington Games.

Similariarly, today on the Washington Post's opinion page, columnist David Ignatius takes on his fellow members of the Washington media establishment this morning:

"Media coverage of the $787 billion stimulus package signed Tuesday by President Obama has had an air of unreality -- as if people were reporting on a baseball game or a tennis match. Is Obama up or down today? Did the Republicans gain or lose momentum? Meanwhile, as Washington obsesses over the political box score, the economy has been going down the toilet.

"You get a better sense of what the crisis feels like -- and the real impact of the stimulus package -- when you leave the miasma of federal spending and examine state and local governments. Here, the impact of the downturn is severe and immediate...

"Did President Obama have a good day Tuesday when he signed the stimulus bill? You bet he did. But the point that weirdly seems to get relatively little attention
is that it was a good day for millions of Americans who are getting hammered by
the recession."

f course on the same opinion page there is a column by David Broder who just can't get his head around the fact that Republicans are not interested in working with Obama, and bipartisanship is not what American's really want, what they want is a functional government.