The Washington Post reports today on Utah, where the President's popularity is high, and in a few communities, almost unanimous.  
 
Naturally, it is condescending:

In Randolph, though —— where Bush received 95.6 percent of the vote and support for him continues to be nearly unanimous —— the mind—set is even more specific to a place that seems less a part of the modern United States than insulated from it. It isn't just mustard, but everything.

There have been no funerals here from Bush's war on terrorism. There are no unemployment lines, no homeless people sleeping in doorways, no sick people being turned away from a hospital because of a lack of insurance, no crime to speak of, no security fence needed around the reservoir, no metal detectors at the schools.

I wish they'd let me do a similar piece on the part of Northwest Washington,D.C. where I live and Kerry (and before him, Gore) received almost unanimous support.

My version of the liberal's isolation would go something like this:

There have been no funerals here from Bush's war on terrorism because virtually none of the young people enlist in the military. There are no unemployment lines, because there is always a government job to fall back on. There are no homeless people sleeping in doorways because the area is  rich and the homeless not  much tolerated. There are no sick people being turned away from a hospital because of a lack of insurance, since most have employer paid health insurance.And when they don't, they have the sense and means to pay for it themselves .There is  no crime to speak of because the area is well—patrolled, the city fathers seeing a certain need to protect their small tax base. There  are no metal detectors at the schools their kids attend  because the residents, most of whom vote against vouchers, send their kids to private schools.

While in other parts of the metropolitan area, people less educated and wealthy than they must endure the ravages of a disintegrating social order which inevitably follows the statist policies they support, here in leafy Forest Hills, they are comfortably enough cosseted to rarely suffer from the consequences of their political folly. Their civic responsibilities end with taking positions, which while intolerable to those who must live with them, give those who vote for them  a sense of moral superiority.

There are all kinds of bubbles. Including the one the Washington Post writers live in.

Clarice Feldman  1 31 06