real

[ljplicease]

They were talking about this poll on Market Place on NPR tonight.

• economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/washington-region-of-economic-optimism/?src=tp

In brief, according to the survey residents of the District of Columbia are more optimistic than any state in the Union. Both on Market Place and in the article they are using it to illustrate how out of touch “Washington” is with the rest of the country, and by “Washington” they mean the politicians, many of whom hate the place so much themselves that they are camping out in their congressional offices. Two things,

1. I doubt that too many people belonging to that “Washington” group had any involvement in the survey.
2. There are many actual explanations that I can think of to explain the enormous disparity in responses. For one, DC is almost completely urbanized, where as all states have a more varied mix of urban and rural areas.

A simpler narrative is that “them” are responsible for all of our ills. This is funny, because in fact the undemocratic nature of being a resident of the district means that everywhere else is responsible for many of the ills of DC thanks to the representatives that everyone sends there.