• Why ‘Inside the Beltway’ Is a Target of Populists

    A catchphrase from a highway that loops around Washington

    Populists on both the left and the right sides of the political spectrum share an imagined geography of the U.S. based on the Capital Beltway, the highway that loops around Washington, D.C. Everything “outside the Beltway” is the genuine America, while everything “inside the Beltway” is suspect at best and irredeemably corrupt at worst.

    In September, after Roy Moore won a Republican Senate primary in Alabama against Sen. Luther Strange, the hard-right website Breitbart News boasted about its influence on the race, and particularly...

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