Could Americans really get any angrier at Washington? Even before the recent government shutdown, congressional approval hovered around 10 percent, a minority thought the country was on the right track, and a “throw the bums out” mentality was rampant. Railing against the toxic mess in D.C. has been a winning strategy for politicians from Barack Obama on down for years now.
And yet average Americans say the shutdown was something new. It seeded a different, raw sense of betrayal by politicians; it left them feeling freshly disillusioned, perhaps permanently so. [cont.]
Molly Ball, The Atlantic