WashPost News Pages Still Undettered by Deficit Polling Reality; Montgomery Serves up New A1 Whopper

The front page of Monday's Washington Post had what purported to be the latest on deficit politics, starting with this:

After an election dominated by vague demands for less debt and smaller government, the sacrifices necessary to achieve those goals are coming into sharp focus.

If you got all your news from the Post and its deficit beat reporter Lori Montgomery, this might sound about right. In June, she wrote that the deficit issue was resonating "more powerfully" among voters than jobs or the economy generally. In May, she wrote of "voters up in arms over the mounting federal debt."

Back in the real world, the election, of course, was not dominated by the issue of the debt. Yes, many pundits talked about it a lot, and a fair number of candidates talked about it. But it didn't "dominate" the election because elections are about real voters, not about what pundits think about voters. And the voters told pollsters, over and over again, that the deficit was a low priority compared to jobs and the economy generally.

Will the Post ever learn, or will they keep getting this one wrong?