Garance Franke-Ruta

Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle says it's a no-brainer: Just go back to the old rules about holding the floor and bringing all other business to a halt.

Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle on Thursday suggested that fixing the filibuster problem in today's Congress wouldn't be a big challenge, if there were the political will to do it. Asked during a panel at the Aspen Ideas Festival if it was time to get rid of the filibuster, Daschle pointed out that it wasn't the filibuster per se so much as the way the contemporary Senate rules interact with it that's turned the parliamentary tactic into a problem in the upper chamber.

"We've done two things with the current rules of the filibuster that have changed everything," he said. "We've gone from roughly three to four filibusters a congress to 130 in the last Congress. We did two things that made it far more palatable. The first thing we did was to say we're going to start -- and this is a technical term -- dual tracking legislation.

"That is, we'll just set the filibuster aside and take up something else. And then we went from dual tracking to triple tracking. Believe it or not, we've actually in the last few Congresses gone to quintuple tracking -- moving aside things so we have five legislative tracks going simultaneously, making the filibuster so easy."

He continued: "But the second thing we did was even more important. It used to be ... when you were on the floor and you were filibustering you had to hold the floor. You no longer have to do that. And if you don't have to hold the floor, there's no price to be paid.... I'd just go back to the old rules. There's a reason we only had three filibusters. You can't triple track, you can't dual track and you gotta hold the floor until you can't hold it anymore and you gotta run to the restroom."

The panel, "Congress's Fall from Grace: Can We Reverse It?," might just as well have been titled "Why Washington Is Broken and No One Can Fix It," as Daschle and panelists Vin Weber, Jane Harman, Mickey Edwards, and Dan Glickman described the transformation they'd witnessed as the United States has undergone wave after wave of procedural reforms intended on increasing transparency, accountability, and the connection between party and ideology in the United States, leading us to a world where congressmen and women talk to the cameras instead of each other, spend far too much time fundraising, leave families behind in their districts and don't socialize with each other, are encouraged by electoral forces to avoid compromise, and now are members of the most disliked, most bitterly divided Congress in over a century. Many of their specific critiques were familiar, and after the forum I would up speaking with an attendee frustrated by the lack of "Aha!" moments in their catalog of civil woes.

But what if the problem with our political system, which is more polarized than at any time since before the Civil War, is not one that can be solved with one big sexy new idea? What if instead it is one more akin to the problem of a neighborhood that has fallen into disrepair, beset by a multitude of problems that are well-recognized but extremely difficult to solve, because the product and responsibility of so many different actors, each responding to slightly different pressures? Reading about the antebellum Congress in Adam Goodheart's 1861: The Civil War Awakening last year, I recognized a familiar portrait of legislative conflict and stalemate. That era's Congress unwound its entrenched partisan positions only after political battles gave way to military ones in a bloody and protracted internal conflict. Our present stalemate is of a different nature, not so much about one big thing (slavery) as the results of many little things, now that America has changed so that geography, party, and ideology are more closely aligned than ever before, thanks to what journalist Bill Bishop calls "the big sort."

But to the extent that our problems have to do with this geographic sorting -- geography, after all, is the fundamental organizing principle of our democracy, so it stands to reason anything that impacts how the population is organized across space will have profound political effects -- it is possible the cure to what ails us politically will have the qualities of what it takes to rebuild a physical community. Chief among them: It will be slow -- decades long -- and require the political equivalent of anchor tenants who can draw others into reinvesting in the system. And it may also require the passage of enough time for the great sort -- the political downside of the flight of educated creative class types into specific geographic areas, giving rise to the cultural hubs Richard Florida has so well described -- to ebb, and the flow of people and energy to return to communities rendered homogeneous by both outflow and a lack of new citizens.

Meanwhile, Harman suggested that one way of pushing back against the new extremism is for states to move to open primaries, like they have in her home state of California, where the top two vote getters of whatever party then face of in a general election. That would lessen the power of small groups of committed partisans and factions of all sorts, and their power to drag politicians from the center, or off the stage entirely. But anything that's up to the states takes time, and will be adopted only if it suits local circumstances (meaning: if it is seen as in the interests of local powers that be). In short: don't hold your breath.

We may just be in an era of learning to live with the political equivalent of eyesores on the corner, an ugly time of broken institutions. One day, the fire that animates today's political gangs will burn itself out. Some old thing will be judge unsalvageable and need to be razed. Someone new will move in to the neighborhood and plant some flowers and repaint a house. But there doesn't seem to be a magic way out, a snap your fingers instant solution to the political and ideological stalemates, any more than there is to rebuilding a neighborhood in physical space.

University of Chicago law Professor Randy Picker tries to catalog the many different legal rulings in the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act (via @FrankPasquale). Click to enlarge:

Read The Atlantic's full coverage of the Supreme Court's health-care decision.

From health care reform to immigration, President Obama is counting on Washington's inertia to make changes that last.

Republican reaction to the Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act was swift and outraged. Romney Press Secretary Andrea Saul tweeted that he'd raised more than $300,000 in the first hour after the verdict was announced. "The only way to save the country from ObamaCare's budget-busting government takeover of health care is to elect a new president," said Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus as Republicans launched a #FullRepeal hashtag on Twitter and announced another (and largely symbolic) House vote to repeal the ACA the week of July 9.

But with the Supreme Court having upheld the ACA, Republicans are now clearly fighting a rear-guard action against a law that is partially implemented and which seems likely to grow in popularity now that it has been ratified and turned into something people can look forward to taking advantage of over time. The Supreme Court decision forces Republicans to express their conservatism not through new program proposals but by standing athwart history yelling stop. Obama has created a set of facts on the ground, and the inertial power of Washington and massive complexity of the health-care field that made universal health-care coverage little more than a Democratic fantasy from 1948 through 2009 will now tip the balance of power in the direction the president has set. Republicans can rail about it all they like, but in Washington, it is hard to ever completely undo what has been done.

Obama has created a set of facts on the ground -- real change -- and the Republican promise to repeal the ACA on day one of a Romney Administration is now a promise to re-litigate the past rather than move America forward. I mean seriously: After four years of arguing about health care, do the American people really want another four-year argument that turns the national conversation into something as annoying and frustrating as tangling with an insurance claims agent? Or will they want to move on, let the ACA be settled law, and argue around the margins on the implementation complications that are sure to arise?

My money is on the latter. That doesn't mean Republicans won't fight it, and keep fighting it. Heck, we're still relitigating the 1973 Supreme Court decisions legalizing abortion nearly 40 years later. But abortion also still remains legal, even if access has been severely restricted in some areas, and that's also an issue about which there is deep moral passion. The moral passion to strip people under 26 of the ability to be on their parent's insurance and to prevent people from getting insurance despite pre-existing conditions will be much thinner. In Washington, it is hard to undo what has been done.

That's a central understanding we can see underlying some of Obama's recent other moves, as well.

In issuing an executive order allowing prosecutors to use their discretion to stop deportation proceedings against young illegal immigrants raised in this country, Obama has created another set of facts on the ground. Not only does the order help win over Hispanic voters in advance of the 2012 election, but it creates a policy that Republicans will either have to keep or overturn should Obama lose the election. It will be much harder for Republicans to undo his policy without even further alienating Hispanics than it would have been to simply fumble on comprehensive immigration reform. The new policy creates facts on the ground that strengthen the inertial forces to continue it.

You might even call that a legacy.

Read The Atlantic's full coverage of the Supreme Court's health-care decision.

His message for more than two years has been that the president should have focused on jobs instead of health care during his first year in office.

Molly Ball's curtain raiser on what Mitt Romney might say today in reaction to the Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare reminded me that he's been nothing if not consistent in calling it a waste of time and a distraction from fixing the economy. Take this March 2010 speech at the National Press Club in Washington, which did not get much attention at the time. My report:

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney had some sharp words Friday for President Obama's economic and foreign policies, criticizing him for spending the past year on health-care reform instead of focusing narrowly on job creation.

Appearing at the National Press Club, the potential 2012 Republican presidential primary contender accused Obama of having the most anti-business, anti-enterprise, anti-employment agenda "since the days of Jimmy Carter" and taking an approach that "has prolonged the recession."

"When you have an enterprise in trouble, the Number One rule is this: Focus, focus, focus," said Romney, the former chief executive of a management consulting firm, Bain & Co. "Make sure you concentrate on the Number One priority with all your energy and passion."

Instead of getting the economy back on track and creating jobs, "the president decided to focus his energy on health care," said Romney. "As a result of his agenda, the opposite of what he has hoped for has occurred."

Skipping over the $862 billion economic stimulus bill that was Obama's first major legislative achievement, Romney said the focus on health-care, coupled with other domestic policy goals, have created an environment of uncertainty for American businesses that was impeding the economic recovery....

It was the GOP message of the day -- "Instead of trying to ram through a health care overhaul ... the President and Speaker Pelosi should focus on getting our fiscal house in order and getting Americans back to work," House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Friday in a statement....

That's some impressive message discipline.

Now that the Affordable Care Act has been upheld by the Supreme Court, however, on the grounds that it's constitutional under the government's power to tax, the GOP focus is once again turning to repeal -- along with with a fresh line of attack objecting to the law as a tax increase on middle income Americans. Majority Leader Eric Cantor announced this morning that he'll schedule another House vote to repeal it for the week of July 9.

Allow me to make a brief public service announcement: I follow Mitt Romney on Facebook because I want to know what his campaign is up to online. I also follow President Obama and a number of other politicians. But, to paraphrase the standard Twitter disclosure, liking is not an endorsement. Anyway, the image at right was sent to me by a friend today. If you, too, would like to avoid be rolled up in a social promotion for a politician's site on Facebook, go to Account Settings in Facebook. Select the "Ads and Friends" section under "Facebook Ads." Choose the option "no one" in the drop-down menu. Save changes. That is all.

Welcome to the Mittness Protection Program, general-election style: The man accused of having no core beliefs thinks the way to win is to keep his views to himself.

"When is Romney going to look like a challenger? Seems to play everything safe, make no news except burn off Hispanics," media mogul Rupert Murdoch tweeted Sunday.

It's been the plaintive cry of worried supporters and the shrewd observation of reporters for going on a year now: Mitt Romney's favored strategy for pursuing the presidency this cycle is to hide in plain sight, avoiding hot-button issues except when forced to articulate positions on them, as during debates, and then reverting to close-lipped type. He's declined to release tax returns dating to before 2010. He doesn't make his bundlers known. He tells his donors more about his policy ambitions than the public, as reporters discovered in April when his remarks were "overheard by reporters on a sidewalk below" the room where he was speaking. He holds "secret meetings" with voters to collect campaign anecdotes. Most recently, he's avoided taking a firm stand on the Supreme Court's decision partially overturning Arizona's strict immigration law. But as in the primary, where Romney's cautious style caused worry he was setting himself up for a protracted battle -- something that in fact came to pass -- there are real dangers in his approach.

"You're running for president and there's a golden opportunity for a challenger, given the economy, given the many failed initiatives of the Obama administration. It's somewhat confusing as to why he's playing it so close to the vest," conservative Republican strategist Keith Appell told Politico's Ben Smith last August.

Plus ça change. Here's why it could be good tactics but bad strategy for Romney to stay too far above the fray in the general:

1. It makes Romney look weak.

Former President Clinton famously said after the 2002 midterm elections, in which the Republicans, the party in power, anomalously picked up seats, "When people are insecure, they'd rather have somebody who is strong and wrong than someone who's weak and right." Failing to take stands on the major issues of the day because they are controversial makes Romney look like he lacks the courage of his convictions. That reemphasizes the attack on Romney that he lacks convictions at all. But a say-nothing candidate is actually not the same as a say-anything one; the latter looks craven, the former, afraid.

And to the extent that President Obama makes bold moves on potentially divisive social issues, Romney's fear of coming too distinctly into view -- his "attack-and-dodge strategy" -- is cast into even greater relief.

2. It makes him look like he has something to hide.

Between the overseas bank accounts, the lack of financial disclosure, and the destruction of his gubernatorial records in Massachusetts, it already looks like Romney is trying to hide his record and the true extent of his vast wealth. Failing to takes stands on major issues besides makes Romney look like he must believe something terrible in his heart of hearts.

The perception that Obama contained multitudes, even if he did not, worked for him in 2008. He was a newcomer on the scene onto whom voters projected their fantasies, hoping he would be a less conventional political actor than he in fact has been. But there's a real risk for Romney, who is better defined in the public mind than Obama was, that attempts to remain a bit of a cipher will just make him look sneaky.

"Trust me" is not a compelling campaign message for our our low-trust era.

3. It gives new weight to the argument he has no core and doesn't believe in anything except his own success.

All of this adds up to the idea that we can't know who Romney is. This is just anecdata, but a year ago, a number of Democrats of my acquaintance looked at Romney and saw a credible alternative to a president they were mad at -- a well-educated moderate Massachusetts Republican for whom they could vote without fear or embarrassment. Today, that warmth has passed and I hear a growing nervousness about him, a fear he would be worse than George W. Bush in office because of his lack of core convictions and the greater fractiousness and power of grassroots Republican activists, whom he seems open to indulging.

They are worried, in short, that "he who stands for nothing will fall for anything."

Romney's issue positions look increasingly like the negotiations of an attorney trying to close a deal -- he'll say what he needs to say, he'll tack and trim, and he'll change course if need be in order to get the result he wants at the great public bargaining table. But once in office, how will such a man govern? Romney's campaign is trying to play it safe by not revealing too much. But there's a real risk people also will look at that caution and develop some hesitations of their own.

Pretty much exactly what you'd expect, as pulled by the Public Campaign Action Fund for a Pinterest board.

As Mitt Romney prepares for a weekend in the resort community of Deer Valley, Utah -- an even posher, often gated enclave just outside Park City, full of enormous private ski chalets -- with Republican leaders and major campaign donors, you might want to take a look at the Public Campaign Action Fund's Pinterest board picturing 33 billionaires who have donated to Restore Our Future, a pro-Romney super PAC. The Romney gathering will be for donors to the Romney Victory Fund, but billionaires who donate large amounts to outside groups tend not to skimp on the formal campaign, once they've committed, and some of these folks seem likely to make an appearance in Utah, too.

Reports Utah's Deseret News:

The exclusive event is one of the perks for donors who have given at least $50,000 or raised a minimum of $250,000 for the Romney Victory Fund, which shares contributions with the Republican Party.

The more than 700 guests expected will hear from what's being billed as the GOP "Dream Team," a list that includes the party's 2008 nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain, strategist Karl Rove, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Besides panel discussions Friday and Saturday on banking, health care, Israel, innovation and the media, there's a barbecue at the Utah Olympic Park, a tea with Romney's wife, Ann, and Olympic ice skating gold-medalist Dorothy Hamill, and golf.

"This is about rewarding your big donors," University of Utah political science professor Matthew Burbank said. "There won't be any average Utahns there at all unless they're serving food or something."...

The Deer Valley retreat is one of two that will be held for top donors and fundraisers. Details of the fall retreat, including where it will be held, have yet to be announced. The same group will also receive special access to the GOP's national convention in Tampa.

Hagle said such treatment is typical for big campaign backers, Republican and Democrat. "It's that access," he said, "that causes them to open their checkbooks."

(via TPM)

It's not just unemployment. All the downsizing and devaluation folks have been through is profoundly affecting the national mood -- and our politics.

Maybe if you filed your expenses more regularly that would help?(Shutterstock)

The New York Post recently ran a story on the suicide of former Lehman Brothers "star" Charles Hopper, which the paper said provides "a glimpse of the terrible legacy that lingers on, even among the wealthy, years after the economic crash." He went from earning seven figures a year to earning $150,000 a year -- what most people still consider a very good salary, but a major downsizing for him -- after two years unable to find work, only to lose his new post and, most recently, have another job fall through. He was underwater on his house, having borrowed against it during the boom, and started having marital problems during the long period in which he wasn't working. In May, he hung himself. "He was under tremendous financial pressure, and he felt aged out of his industry," his wife told the paper.

Suicides in the financial sector stand out because they're seared into national memory as iconic of the great crash of 1929, after which the national suicide rate jumped from 13.5 per 100,000 to 18.9 per 100,000 in a year. We haven't seen anything like that this time around, and the fact that the very wealthy have done so very well for themselves during the past few decades has led to the Occupy movement's drive against the 1 percent, rather than any kind of public sympathy for those who've been forced into the 5 percent, or from the 5 percent to the 10 percent, or even from the 25 percent to the 35 percent.

And yet it sometimes seems as though our obsessive focus on the very wealthy -- envying them and valorizing them before the crash; critiquing them after it -- is as politically distracting as attacks on programs for the very poor. There is so much space in American life between the 1 percent and the unemployed, between those who can donate millions to political campaigns and those who don't even have health-care coverage, but the amount of attention devoted to the extremes and the margins can make it harder to see what's happening in this vast middle.

As National Journal's Ron Brownstein observed in January, "on most questions measuring changes in economic circumstances, the slowdown has imposed greater costs on those at the economy's margins -- lower-income families, those without advanced education, and, in many cases, minorities. But partly because the downturn has affected not only income and employment but also housing and stock prices, it has reached into leafy cul-de-sacs often sheltered from such storms."

A March 2011 Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor poll found that "families earning at least $100,000 were more likely than those earning less to report that their homes had declined in value" and an October 2011 one found that "more than two-fifths of such affluent families, and nearly three-fifths of college graduates, said that the downturn had forced them to cut back on their spending either to pay down existing debt or avoid adding to it," Brownstein reported.

Because people don't have to be 99ers to find their own financial strains politically relevant in the voting booth, it matters when even those who, when seen from the bottom 25 percent, appear to be among the more privileged in American life feel that they are struggling. Not only do such people vote -- they consistently have higher turnout. Sixty percent of those from households earning above $75,000 voted in 2010, compared to 40 percent from those earning less than $50,000. And 61 percent of those with a college degree or above voted, as compared to 35 percent of those with a high-school education or less. Even in the high-turnout, demographically unusual 2008 election, the gap was there: 59 percent of those with incomes of $50,000 or less voted, compared to 76 percent of those who earned more than that.

The New York Times tried to get at some of this Tuesday in a piece looking past all the talk of unemployment to examine the many American workers who find themselves underemployed or underpaid. But as is typical of the contemporary hard-times genre piece, it led with a non-college educated person making an hourly wage who'd seen her wages cut so that she made but $233 last month -- which is less than one full-time week's worth of pay at the federal minimum wage.

The political problem for the incumbent president is that it's not just older bus drivers in Atlanta like that hourly earner who are living in the churn of the troubled economy. It's nearly everybody, still, in one way or another. Even professionals with graduate degrees are having trouble finding appropriate work, according to The National Law Journal:

Slightly more than half of the class of 2011 -- 55 percent -- found full-time, long-term jobs that require bar passage nine months after they graduated, according to employment figures released on June 18 by the American Bar Association.

The statistic was perhaps the most sobering in a season of bad news about new lawyer employment. Less than one week earlier, the National Association for Law Placement reported that only two-thirds of new graduates landed any type of job requiring their law degree, and that the overall employment rate hit an 18-year low at 85.6 percent.

People in their prime earning years are in especially bad shape, The Huffington Post reports, compared to their parents -- a classic benchmark of lifetime success against which people measure themselves:

The average Gen X family is nearly 70 percent poorer than its counterparts of the same age in 1984, according to a Pew Research Center study from last year. Over time, this gap has widened. The latter now has 47 times more assets than the former, according to Credit.com's analysis of Pew data.

Part of this is because Americans lost a huge amount of their wealth in the crash, and haven't gotten it back:

The recession has affected individuals of all ages. Last week, newly released government data showed that Americans lost a record-breaking 38.8 percent of their wealth from 2007-2010.

Also causing a crunch: health-care costs have doubled since the Clinton years:

The cost of health insurance for many Americans [in 2011] climbed more sharply than in previous years, outstripping any growth in workers' wages and adding more uncertainty about the pace of rising medical costs.

A new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit research group that tracks employer-sponsored health insurance on a yearly basis, shows that the average annual premium for family coverage through an employer reached $15,073 in 2011, an increase of 9 percent over the previous year....

Over all, the cost of family coverage has about doubled since 2001, when premiums averaged $7,061, compared with a 34 percent gain in wages over the same period.

The cost of college is also way up, even at historically affordable public universities:

Nationally, state and local spending per college student, adjusted for inflation, reached a 25-year low this year [2012], jeopardizing the long-held conviction that state-subsidized higher education is an affordable steppingstone for the lower and middle classes. All the while, the cost of tuition and fees has continued to increase faster than the rate of inflation, faster even than medical spending. If the trends continue through 2016, the average cost of a public college will have more than doubled in just 15 years, according to the Department of Education.

College debt is also up, as are struggles to pay it off:

The balance of federal student loans has grown by more than 60 percent in the last five years .... But even if student loans are what many economists consider "good debt," an increasing number of borrowers are struggling to pay them off, and in the process becoming mired in a financial morass.

Education Department data shows that payments are being made on just 38 percent of the balance of federal student loans, down from 46 percent five years ago. The balances are unpaid because the borrowers are still in school, have postponed payments or have stopped paying altogether.

Nearly one in 10 borrowers who started repayment in 2009 defaulted within two years, the latest data available -- about double the rate in 2005.

Though still down from their recession peak, foreclosures were again on the rise in May:

U.S. home foreclosure filings increased 9 percent last month over April, according to a new report from RealtyTrac, an online marketplace that tracks foreclosures.

Foreclosure filings were reported on 205,990 homes in May -- that's one in every 639 homes nationwide. That's about 4 percent lower than this time last year, but the rising monthly rates underscore how difficult it will be to restart the devastated housing market.

So were foreclosure starts:

Foreclosure starts -- default notices or scheduled foreclosure auctions, depending on the state -- were filed on 109,051 U.S. properties in May, a 12 percent increase from April and a 16 percent increase from May 2011.

Meanwhile, there are not enough job openings to go around:

Job openings fell to a five-month low in April and showed their sharpest percentage decline in about seven and a half years, according to a government report Tuesday that helped confirm a slowdown in the labor market.

The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, indicated 3.4 million job openings at the end of April, an 8 percent decline from the previous month.

The pace of total hiring also slowed, with 160,000 fewer jobs filled during the month.

Moreover, the drop showed weakness across the employment spectrum, with manufacturing seeing 62,000 fewer job openings and construction dropping by 2,000.

Hiring has slowed and firings are up:

Job openings in the U.S. decreased in April by the most in almost four years, the latest sign that the labor market is cooling.

The number of open positions dropped by 325,000, the biggest decline since September 2008, to 3.42 million from 3.74 million the prior month, the Labor Department said today in Washington. Hiring slowed from the prior month and firings climbed.

The decrease in openings coincides with the slowdown in hiring seen in April and May, signaling employers are pulling back as the economy cools. The number of jobs available is down from an average 4.46 million in the two years before the recession began, showing the labor market continues to struggle.

Nor are enough new jobs being created to keep pace with the size of the population:

Anyone hoping for a healthy labor-market recovery is going to be sorely disappointed by the May jobs report. The U.S. economy added just 69,000 jobs last month -- far below expectations. The unemployment rose to 8.2 percent. And the details of the report are even more dire.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics revised down its job estimates for previous months, too. Remember when everyone gulped in April because the economy added only 115,000 new jobs? Turns out that was actually just 77,000 new jobs. March also got bumped down, from 154,000 to 143,000. For the past two years, BLS revisions have frequently been upward. That streak appears to be broken.

Much of the job carnage seems to be driven by the construction sector, which lost 28,000 jobs last month. As Jed Kolko of the housing research firm Trulia notes, construction jobs now make up just 4.1 percent of all employment -- the lowest level since 1946. And the United States hasn't added any new construction jobs, on net, since the beginning of last year. There's still a massive hangover from the housing bubble. ...

All told, the U.S. job market appears to be sputtering out.

No surprise then that wages are down, and mobility along with it:

adjusted for inflation, the median hourly wage was lower in 2011 than it was a decade earlier, according to data from a forthcoming book by the Economic Policy Institute, "The State of Working America, 12th Edition." Good benefits are harder to come by, and people are staying longer in jobs that they want to leave, afraid that they will not be able to find something better. Only 2.1 million people quit their jobs in March, down from the 2.9 million people who quit in December 2007, the first month of the recession.

The government sector is downsizing, too, now that the stimulus moment has given way to the austerity era:

Government payrolls grew in the early part of the recovery, largely because of federal stimulus measures. But since its postrecession peak in April 2009 (not counting temporary Census hiring), the public sector has shrunk by 657,000 jobs. The losses appeared to be tapering off earlier this year, but have accelerated for the last three months, creating the single biggest drag on the recovery in many areas.

***

This all adds up to a portrait of an economy that's in a much more multifarious kind of trouble than you can see just from the unemployment rate. And one much harder to untangle from Washington, D.C.

Know something else wrong with the economy? Add it in comments, below.

Newt Gingrich tells ABC News (during an interview at the Washington National Zoo, natch) why the former Massachusetts governor gets to be President Obama's challenger:

"In the end, he had, I think, sixteen billionaires and we had one."

With a new book alleging John Edwards had multiple affairs, his famous mistress lengthens the already long odds of a political redemption.

An actual button being sold by Democrats during the 2004 presidential campaign, produced by a union shop and everything. (Garance Franke-Ruta, personal collection)

It's no accident that in politics we talk of candidates wooing voters or courting the electorate, and joke that some are ones to date and others to marry. The language of politics and the language of romantic love have been intertwined since the emergence of early modern English literature, in part because the Renaissance flowering of such coincided with the rule of a female queen in England, and was a product of her court. But the relationship between the language of romantic courtship and of political courtiers, the wooing of women and the wooing of the politically powerful, goes back even further and speaks to something fundamental in our understanding of what it means to seduce and to create allegiances and passion.

Which is why it's so striking in all the tales of politicians philandering there's so little actual seduction involved. So John Edwards's mistress Rielle Hunter will say in her book What Really Happened: John Edwards, Our Daughter and Me, to be released next week, reiterating tales she's told for years and newly revealing that she was not Edwards's only one. He'd had two affairs before, she writes.

To which one might reply, as Buffy the Vampire Slayer would say, "Does the word 'duh' mean anything to you?"

All you need to know about a man is how he has strayed to know whether he is a player or a fool for love. As I wrote after the Anthony Weiner scandal, where the story of a single graphic mistweet rapidly morphed into the story of sexting with multiple women, the iron law of political sex scandals is that there is no such thing as two. Either someone strays once -- think of former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford's teary confession that he'd "developed a relationship" with a "dear friend" -- or does so over and over as part of a pattern of behavior. And you can usually tell from the description of the affair or straying in question which of the two scenarios you're looking at.

According to a copy of the book obtained by ABC News, Hunter says she met Edwards in February 2006 and told him, "You're so hot." He then called to invite her back to his hotel room at the New York Regency Hotel. And that was that. This kind of behavior comes across pretty plainly as the actions of a man who was not nervous at all about what he was doing and also not afraid of rejection or being exposed. The most logical explanation for his demeanor and approach of course is the one she now says was the case -- that he'd been down that road before. In short, it was never probable that Hunter was the only other woman in Edwards' marriage, based solely on the evidence of his actions, and the manner in which their affair began.

The apparently frankness of Hunter's forthcoming book -- which she will discuss in an interview airing on ABC News Friday -- will likely close off the only avenue for redemption Edwards might have had. As Chris Cillizza has pointed out, the usual path to political redemption for straying politicians begins with forgiveness by the person closest to him -- his wife. That's not an option in Edwards's case.

Unlike Spitzer and Vitter, whose spouses stood by them and pledged to make it work, Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, passed away in December 2010. There was no forgiveness. And there will be no chance for it.

Unlike Vitter or Spitzer, who can hope for future stories about how they weathered a very rocky time in their relationship, Edwards will forever be burdened by the fact that he cheated on his terminally ill wife.

In the eyes of the American public, that makes any chance to forgive and forget about what Edwards has done next to impossible. For Edwards to have any reasonable hope about reemerging as a public (or political) figure, there would need to be a parallel storyline about how his wife was prospering and enjoying her life. And that's not possible.

The only conceivable exception to this rule is the marriage exception as demonstrated by Prince Charles, who managed to restore his reputation after the death of Lady Diana by sticking with his long-time paramour Camilla Parker-Bowles and eventually marrying her. It's hard to imagine Edwards and Hunter developing a real relationship and marrying at this point, though she's apparently also vague in the book about the nature of her current relationship to Edwards.

Still, "he has a long history of lying about one thing only -- women -- and I mistakenly thought I was different," Hunter writes. That doesn't sound like the basis for a strong alliance, whether political or romantic, going forward.

First, he came out for same sex marriage. Now a second bold move on behalf of a marginal group will dominate the conversation.

Is this how Obama's 2012 campaign is going to go? Boring economic speeches that have trouble breaking through, mixed with daring pronouncements in support of long-standing drives toward a more equitable society for some of America's most marginalized residents?

First President Obama came out in support for same-sex marriage in a move bolder than even many gay and lesbian activists expected. Now he's using the authority of the bully pulpit and the power of the regulatory state on behalf of young Americans born abroad but raised here, the illegal immigrants/undocumented Americans (how awful that there is no longer even any neutral term for such residents of this country, so partisan has the issue of their rights and future become) who would have been covered by the DREAM Act, should the U.S. Congress ever have seen fit to pass it. The executive order taking advantage of prosecutorial discretion in deportation cases will cover individuals brought to the United States through no fault of their own before the age of 16 who have lived in the U.S. at least five years and have no criminal record. They must also have earned a high school degree or served in the military, and still be under 30. Those who meet the criteria can get deportation proceedings (or the threat of same) deferred for two years and seek work permits.

Coming in the wake of the publication of a cover story in Time magazine on the plight of "undocumented Americans" by Jose Antonio Vargas, founder of Define American (and a former colleague of mine at The Washington Post), the move seems certain to electrify the presidential race and solidify the support of Hispanic Americans.

Vargas says the administration's move in support of "deferred action" on deportation will allow all but three of the 36 "undocumented Americans" pictured on the Time cover to "now be legal residents," though it won't impact him, since he's over the age cut off outlined in the new "deferred action" executive order. His full statement:

Today our country embraces upwards of one million young new Americans: DREAMers. They grew up here, they were educated here and they have so much to give back to the country they call home. With a stroke of President Obama's pen, our country lives up to its ideals and finds a fair and pragmatic solution, ending the nightmare of a generation of young people who are Americans in all but documents. Every social movement in the world is led by young people, and DREAMers are the beating heart of this growing immigrant rights movement. Like generations of immigrants before them, they have insisted on a better life not just for themselves and their families but for the country they love. This is a victory for DREAMers and the members of their underground railroad -- educators and faith leaders, friends and neighbors -- who have aided and supported them. The journey is far from over for the remaining millions of undocumented Americans like me -- at 31, I am past the age limit -- but this is a big, bold and necessary step in the road to citizenship. Thank you, President Obama, for this principled and courageous act.

The executive order does not constitute amnesty and won't provide the young people with a path to citizenship, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters on a conference call Friday morning.

"These young people do not represent a risk to safety or security," she said.

Wandering down an Internet rabbithole yesterday I wound up stumbling across the posters of Melissa Gruntkosky at Pressbound. This one, in particular struck me as the sort of thing the New York City Department of Health might be wanting to slap in a subway car.

It's not just about promoting catchwords like the "death tax" -- Republicans have also been fighting to suppress words deemed overly liberal.

Shutterstock

Bisexual sustainable development activists working to prevent climate change-related sea-level rise better watch out: Just about all the preceding words have been flagged by conservatives and Republicans as liberal buzzwords that need to be stricken from public conversation, according to a spate of recent news stories.

Sure, it's a time-honored GOP practice to seek to replace a perfectly good description, such as "the estate tax," with a more inflammatory phrase, but the new fight against liberal words does not appear to be seeking to replace them with an alternative so much as to deny the existence of a thing. Three examples:

1. "Bisexual" and "transgender."

The Boston Globe reported Tuesday that Romney's administration couldn't countenance these words during his later years in office, when he was preparing for a presidential bid:

Former governor Mitt Romney's administration in 2006 blocked publication of a state antibullying guide for Massachusetts public schools because officials objected to use of the terms "bisexual'' and "transgender'' in passages about protecting certain students from harassment, according to state records and interviews with current and former state officials.

Romney aides said publicly at the time that publication of the guide had been delayed because it was a lengthy document that required further review. But an e-mail authored in May of that year by a high-ranking Department of Public Health official -- and obtained last week by the Globe through a public records request -- reflected a different reason.

"Because this is using the terms 'bisexual' and 'transgendered,' DPH's name may not be used in this publication,'' wrote the official, Alda Rego-Weathers, then the deputy commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.

2. "Sea level rise" and "climate change."

The Virginian-Pilot reported Sunday that even the phrase once thought less loaded than "global warming" is now out of favor in Virginia, along with neutral descriptions of the type of water that could create flooding threats in the coastal state:

State lawmakers ran into a problem this year when recommending a study on rising sea levels and their potential impacts on coastal Virginia.

It was not a scientific problem or a financial one. It was linguistic.

They discovered that they could not use the phrases "sea level rise" or "climate change" in requesting the study, in part because of objections from Republican colleagues and also for fear of stirring up conservative activists, some of whom believe such terms are liberal code words....

State Del. Chris Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, who insisted on changing the "sea level rise" study in the General Assembly to one on "recurrent flooding," said he wants to get political speech out of the mix altogether.

He said "sea level rise" is a "left-wing term" that conjures up animosities on the right.

3. "Sustainable development."

This word hasn't been targeted directly so much as become a buzzword for an agenda the legislature of Alabama has now formally rejected. In May, it passed a law stating:

The State of Alabama and all political subdivisions may not adopt or implement policy recommendations that deliberately or inadvertently infringe or restrict private property rights without due process, as may be required by policy recommendations originating in, or traceable to "Agenda 21."

Now signed into law, "This bill, that would bar the state from taking over private property without due process, is intended to shelter Alabamians from the United Nations Agenda 21, a sustainable development initiative that some conservatives see as a precursor for the creation of a world government," Alabama GOP Executive Director T.J. Maloney said in a statement.

Know of more words conservatives have sought to strike from documents or consider buzzwords of an intolerable liberal agenda that require opposition in law? Please add them in the comments below.

The first lady joins the lifestyle-images heavy social network in advance of Fathers' Day in a soft-sell reach-out to women voters.

White House

Yes, that's the first lady of the United States of America in workout gear playing tug-of-war in the White House's Blue Room. "Jimmy was a gracious loser!" Michelle Obama wrote on Pinterest of her competitor, late night host Jimmy Fallon, with whom she sparred in February while promoting her "Let's Move!" fitness initiative.

As of February, women were 82 percent of active users on Pinterest, and Obama's participation in the lady-friendly social sharing site provides her husband's campaign with a soft-sell way to reach out to the middle-class women voters the Obama campaign has been targeting more pointedly with its political messages about "the war on women."

Besides: Ann Romney's been on Pinterest already since February, and it's about time the real Mrs. O started competing with such parody Pinterest accounts as this Mrs. Obama one.

It's time to set aside the stereotypes: Student government is actually a training-ground for eventual female members of Congress.

Is the difference between being a grind and having grit mainly a question of circumstance?

Sometimes I wonder about this. Female cussedness is presented as an admirable quality in such films and television shows as True Grit and Veep, but the ferocious determination of Tracy Flick in the 1999 movie Election remains a byword for, as my father once said of Hillary Clinton, "everything I find unattractive about American women."

I've been wondering about this in particular now that it is intern and summer seminar season in Washington. That means incredibly awkward cold calls from young women at random congressional offices, like the one who appeared to never have used the voice function on a phone before, but was trying to update the press list for her senator boss and called me earlier this week. Thankfully, it also means an influx of incredibly poised young women, such as the high school girls selected for Running Start's Young Women's Political Leadership program, who will be in town at the end of the month for trainings designed to help them think about themselves as leaders and maybe even run for office one day (full disclosure: I volunteered as a media trainer with the nonpartisan project last year).

Such projects are important because, as it turns out, being involved in the political arena at a young age is something that actually amps up the odds of life-long achievement in it. Thirteen of the last 20 presidents (including Obama) first ran for elective office at or before age 35 -- a fact Marie Wilson first noted in her book, Closing the Leadership Gap: Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World, and one pointed out to me by Barbara Palmer of Ohio's Baldwin-Wallace College at a breakfast in Washington last week.

Student government turns out to be as important a political training ground for women in Congress as are state legislatures, according to scholars at the the Women & Politics Institute at American University's School of Public Affairs. In 2009, they surveyed women in the U.S. House and Senate. Not everyone replied. But the results they found among those who did were just fascinating: "53.7% of respondents had served in some form of student government, in either high school, college or both." And, "of the women who served in student government, 37.9% did not go on to serve in their state's legislature, making student government a unique pathway to higher office for women."

That's kind of an amazing fact. It also means that it's worrisome that even as women have become the majority of college students, they have not kept pace when it comes to taking advantage of opportunities for young people to test out what it's like to run a campaign, and be voted on. If more young women participated in student government, more might go on to seek leadership positions in our real government.

Instead, by 2011, only 40 percent of student body presidents around the country were women, and the number is believed to be even lower when just considering four-year colleges -- not to mention top universities. "At the 50 colleges ranked highest by U.S. News & World Report, less than a third of student presidents are women," The Washington Post's Jenna Johnson reported last year. It's not uncommon for a school to be 60 percent female and have a student government that's 81 percent male, or a 62 percent female student body and 72 percent male student government.

Which brings me back to Tracy Flick. Grit and overconfidence are well-known as traits that predict success, where grit is defined as a psychological trait that allows people -- especially young people -- to buckle down and engage in "deliberate practice," a.k.a. unpleasant and boring tasks that are essential to acquiring expertise. In short, successful people know how to be grinds. They also tend to be convinced of themselves, even in the face of opposition.

I don't think I first saw Election until about a decade after it came out, because when it was released I was still living under an informal "avoid all Reese Witherspoon movies" policy (kind of a Tammy Metzler thing, I know). But when I did finally see it, I didn't get why Tracy Flick was seen as the villain of it.

Looked at objectively, the movie is about two middle-aged, sexually frustrated male high school teachers who become weirdly obsessed with a highly ambitious, well-organized, and hard-working female student from a not-very-prosperous single-parent home -- and how she doggedly pursues her dreams despite their efforts to thwart her and the costs to her own happiness.

First, one of the men seduces her -- against school rules about dating students and in violation of his own marriage vows and possibly the statutory rape laws of Nebraska, where the action is set -- and tries to derail her life suggesting she run away with him. Then, when he is appropriately fired by the school, his friend, played by Matthew Broderick, recruits a popular but sidelined male jock to run against her for student body president because he doesn't want to have to spend time with her as the academic adviser to the student government if she wins, alternately hating her for her ambition and wanting to bed her himself. This teacher fantasizes about Flick when he has sex with his wife, blames her for the breakup of his friend's marriage and career, and, after failing to push the jock into the presidency, throws out just enough of the ballots he's charged with counting to throw the contest to Flick's male competitor. A janitor who hates the teacher because he's an inconsiderate slob finds the tossed ballots and reveals the plot, causing Broderick's character to lose his job. Flick, having survived all this, as well as potential scandal of her own making after she tears down her opponent's candidate posters in a fit of frustration -- the jock's lesbian rebel sister saves Flick by take the blame, so she can get expelled and go to an all girls school -- ultimately gets the presidency. Flick goes on to Georgetown University and either a job or internship with her a Republican from Nebraska in D.C. The Broderick-played teacher continues to hate her irrationally.

That Elizabeth Dole, Hillary Clinton, and Sarah Palin -- the three most prominent women to seek the presidency or vice presidency since Election came out -- have all been compared to Tracy Flick shows something of the movie's staying power, and the extent to which it created a negative cultural stereotype for discussing women and political ambition.

But it's no good if our only cultural reference point for women in student government is a negative one. If America's ever going to reach even a third women in Congress, it will need more women to get a taste for political combat on campuses -- and more Tracy Flicks making it all the way to Washington, D.C.

A provocative new study argues that Google searches for racial epithets can be synced with election results to reveal what Americans truly think.

Since 1982, political pollsters and Democrats have worried about the tendency of African American politicians to underperform on Election Day relative to their last known standing in non-partisan and credible polls. Dubbed the Bradley effect, after the Los Angeles mayor who lost his bid for the California governor's mansion despite being ahead in polls, or the Wilder effect, after the Virginia governor who narrowly became that state's first black executive after polls showed him with a sizable lead, the theory predicts that white voters' concern over appearing racist will cause them to overstate their willingness to vote for a black politician when queried by pollsters.

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

In 2008, concern over the possibility of the effect contributed to Democratic pre-election anxiety (it's almost always Democrats who worry about it, since most African Americans who run in statewide general election contests are Democrats). "In recent days, nervous Obama supporters have traded worry about a survey -- widely disputed by pollsters yet voraciously consumed by the politically obsessed -- that concluded racial bias would cost Mr. Obama six percentage points in the final outcome," reported Kate Zernike in an October 2008 Week in Review piece in The New York Times. "He is, of course, about six points ahead in current polls. See? He's going to lose."

"How much we are under-representing people who are intolerant and therefore unlikely to vote for Obama is an open question," Andrew Kohut, the president of Pew Research Center, told the paper. "I suspect not a great deal, but maybe some. And 'maybe some' could be crucial in a tight election."

Obama, as we all know, went on to win, becoming the country's first black president and claiming victory with a margin of more than 7 percent over John McCain.

Now the concern that Obama might lose because he's black is back, thanks to the provocative article "The Effects of Racial Animus on a Black Presidential Candidate: Using Google Search Data to Find What Surveys Miss" (PDF), by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, a doctoral candidate in economics at Harvard University.

The New York Times' Sunday Review featured a fascinating infographic by Stephens-Davidowitz, and he unpacked his research in an accompanying blog post examining how he used Google searches done prior to the 2008 election to gauge racist sentiment in certain geographic areas and correlate that with Obama's eventual vote share.

Some key excerpts from the study itself:

How can we know how much racial animus costs black candidates if few voters will admit such socially unacceptable attitudes to surveys? I use a new, non-survey proxy for an area's racial animus: Google search queries that include racially charged language. I compare the proxy to an area's votes for Barack Obama, the 2008 black Democratic presidential candidate, controlling for its votes for John Kerry, the 2004 white Democratic presidential candidate. Previous research using a similar specification but survey proxies for racial attitudes yielded little evidence that racial attitudes affected Obama. Racially charged search, in contrast, is a robust negative predictor of Obama's vote share. My estimates imply that continuing racial animus in the United States cost Obama 3 to 5 percentage points of the national popular vote in 2008, yielding his opponent the equivalent of a home-state advantage country-wide.

In short, were there no racism in America, Stephens-Davidowitz appears to be arguing, Obama's strong finish would have been an epic blow-out.

Here's more about Stephens-Davidowitz's research method -- warning: racial epithets ahead -- and findings:

The baseline proxy that I use is the percentage of an area's total Google searches from 2004-2007 that included the word "nigger" or "niggers." I choose the most salient word to constrain data-mining. I do not include data after 2007 to avoid capturing reverse causation, with dislike for Obama causing individuals to use racially charged language on Google. My regression analysis includes 196 of 210 media markets, encompassing more than 99 percent of American voters.

The epithet is a common term used on Google. During the period 2004-2007, there were roughly the same number of Google searches that included the word "nigger(s)" as there were Google searches that included words and phrases such as "migraine(s)," "economist," "sweater," "Daily Show," and "Lakers." (Google data are case-insensitive.) The most common searches including the epithet (such as "nigger jokes" and "I hate niggers") return websites with derogatory material about African-Americans. The top hits for the top racially charged searches are nearly all textbook examples of antilocution, a majority group's sharing stereotype-based jokes using coarse language outside a minority group's presence. This was determined as the first and crucial stage of prejudice in Allport's (1979) classic treatise. From 2004-2007, the searches were most popular in West Virginia; upstate New York; rural Illinois; eastern Ohio; southern Mississippi; western Pennsylvania; and southern Oklahoma.

I find that racially charged search is a large and robust negative predictor of Obama's vote share. A one standard deviation increase in an area's racially charged search is associated with a 1.5 percentage point decrease in Obama's vote share, controlling for John Kerry's vote share. The statistical significance and large magnitude are robust to controls for changes in unemployment rates; home-state candidate preference; Census division fixed effects; prior trends in presidential voting; changes in Democratic House vote shares; swing state status; and demographic controls. The estimated effect is somewhat larger when adding controls for an area's Google search volume for other terms that are moderately correlated with search volume for "nigger" but are not evidence for racial animus. In particular, I control for searches including other terms for African-Americans ("African American" and "nigga," the alternate spelling used in nearly all rap songs that include the word) and profane language.

The results imply that, relative to the most racially tolerant areas in the United States, prejudice cost Obama between 3.1 percentage points and 5.0 percentage points of the national popular vote. This implies racial animus gave Obama's opponent roughly the equivalent of a home-state advantage country-wide. The cost of racial prejudice was not decisive in the 2008 election. But a four percentage point loss by the winning candidate would have changed the popular vote winner in the majority of post-war presidential elections....

A large cost of race in the general election is consistent with some scholars' estimates that, in light of the immensely unpopular incumbent Republican president, Obama substantially underperformed in the 2008 general election (Lewis-Beck et al., 2010; Tesler and Sears, 2010). It also can explain why white male Democratic candidates consistently outperformed Obama in hypothetical general election polls (Jackman and Vavreck, 2011). And it can explain why House Democrats' vote gains from 2004 to 2008 were significantly larger than Obama's gain relative to Kerry.

But for all that, it's not totally clear from Stephens-Davidowitz's findings what the Electoral College impact of racism was or would be. The popular vote is obviously critical in a presidential election, but it's mediated. It cannot come as a shock to anyone that Obama is not seen as the cat's meow in places like West Virginia, southern Mississippi or southern Oklahoma. And even a large racial cost in those states would have had no impact on Obama's general election prospects, because he was always going to lose those states. Meanwhile, racism in places like upstate New York and rural Illinois, as documented in Google searches, may be culturally and politically significant and yet still pretty much irrelevant to Obama's reelection prospects, as any Democrat who's so weak he can't even win New York or Illinois is someone heading into a blow-out loss nationwide.

Where racial animus might intersect with the Electoral College to matter -- eastern Ohio, western Pennsylvania, parts of Florida -- on Election Day is something to contemplate. Still, if Obama loses, it will be hard to argue that those well-known swing states and regions don't also have unusually significant economic problems that might turn them away from any incumbent president running on the historically weak fundamentals Obama is. Some researchers will point to Obama's race as a factor if he loses -- but even more will point to the biggest and best-know electoral predictor of all: the strength of the economy.

Surveys show a shockingly high fraction think a quarter of the country is gay or lesbian, when the reality is that it's probably less than 2 percent.

One in ten. It's the name of the group that puts on the Reel Affirmations gay and lesbian film festival in Washington, D.C., each year. It's the percent popularized by the Kinsey Report as the size of the gay male population. And it's among the most common figures pointed to in popular culture as an estimate of how many people are gay or lesbian.

But what percentage of the population is actually gay or lesbian? With the debate over same-sex marriage again an emerging fault line in American political life, the answer comes as a surprise: A lower number than you might think -- and a much, much, much lower one than most Americans believe.

In surveys conducted in 2002 and 2011, pollsters at Gallup found that members of the American public massively overestimated how many people are gay or lesbian. In 2002, a quarter of those surveyed guessed upwards of a quarter of Americans were gay or lesbian (or "homosexual," the third option given). By 2011, that misperception had only grown, with more than a third of those surveyed now guessing that more than 25 percent of Americans are gay or lesbian. Women and young adults were most likely to provide high estimates, approximating that 30 percent of the population is gay. Overall, "U.S. adults, on average, estimate that 25 percent of Americans are gay or lesbian," Gallup found. Only 4 percent of all those surveyed in 2011 and about 8 percent of those surveyed in 2002 correctly guessed that fewer than 5 percent of Americans identify as gay or lesbian.

Such a misunderstanding of the basic demographics of sexual behavior and identity in America has potentially profound implications for the acceptance of the gay-rights agenda. On the one hand, people who overestimate the percent of gay Americans by a factor of 12 seem likely to also wildly overestimate the cultural impact of same-sex marriage. On the other hand, the extraordinary confusion over the percentage of gay people may reflect a triumph of the gay and lesbian movement's decades-long fight against invisibility and the closet.

"My first reaction to that, aside from a little chuckle, is that it's actually a sign of the success of the movement for LGBT rights," said Stuart Gaffney, a spokesman for the group Marriage Equality USA. "We are a small minority, and we will never have full equality without the support of the majority, and a poll like that suggests the majority is extremely aware of their gay neighbors, coworkers, and friends."

In recent years, as homosexuality has become less stigmatized, pro-gay rights groups have come around to acknowledging that a smaller percent of people identify themselves as gay than some of the early gay rights rhetoric claimed, based on Alfred Kinsey's 1948 report, "Sexuality in the Human Male." His survey research on non-random populations in the immediate post-World War II period concluded that 10 percent of men "were predominantly homosexual between the ages of 16 and 55" and that 37 percent had had at least one homosexual experience in their lives, but did not get into questions of identity per se.

Contemporary research in a less homophobic environment has counterintuitively resulted in lower estimates rather than higher ones. The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, a gay and lesbian think tank, released a study in April 2011 estimating based on its research that just 1.7 percent of Americans between 18 and 44 identify as gay or lesbian, while another 1.8 percent -- predominantly women -- identify as bisexual. Far from underestimating the ranks of gay people because of homophobia, these figures included a substantial number of people who remained deeply closeted, such as a quarter of the bisexuals. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey of women between 22 and 44 that questioned more than 13,500 respondents between 2006 and 2008 found very similar numbers: Only 1 percent of the women identified themselves as gay, while 4 percent identified as bisexual.

Higher numbers can be obtained when asking about lifetime sexual experiences, rather than identity. The Williams Institute found that, overall, an estimated 8.2 percent of the population had engaged in some form same-sex sexual activity. Put another way, 4.7 percent of the population had wandered across the line without coming to think of themselves as either gay or bisexual. Other studies suggest those individuals are, like the bisexuals, mainly women: The same CDC study that found only 1 percent of women identify as lesbian, for example, found that 13 percent of women reported a history of some form of sexual contact with other women.

"Estimates of those who report any lifetime same-sex sexual behavior and any same-sex sexual attraction are substantially higher than estimates of those who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual," the Williams Institute's Gary J. Gates concluded.

These numbers are significant because identity -- and not behavior -- is the central determinant of whether or not someone will seek a same-sex marriage. A straight woman who makes out a couple of times with a female friend in college is not going to seek a same-sex marriage, nor is a guy who fooled around once with a male friend while drunk in high school. Neither individual is demographically relevant to the question of how often same-sex marriages will occur. And it's not clear at all what fraction of bisexuals will seek out same-sex marriages.

Overall, there have been fewer than 75,000 state-sanctioned same-sex marriages in the United States since they began to be permitted less than a decade ago, according to an estimate by Marriage Equality USA. Over the eight years since Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage in May 2004, 18,462 same-sex couples married in the Bay State. Another 18,000 were estimated to have wed in California during the few months before Proposition 8 passed in 2008, banning future ones; those marriages remain on the books, as the proposition was not retroactive. It's not totally clear how many same-sex marriages have taken place in New York, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the District of Columbia, the other jurisdictions where it is permitted.

Of course, gays aren't the only minority population that has an outsized place in the public imagination. Americans also "vastly overestimate the percentage of fellow residents who are foreign-born, by more than a factor of two, and the percentage who are in the country illegally, by a factor of six or seven," according to a 2012 Wall Street Journal report on the social science of estimating minority groups. In 1993, a group of political scientists reported in Public Opinion Quarterly that "The extent to which minority populations are perceived as a kind of threat is ... related to perceived proportions, though the direction of causality cannot be determined." Correcting the misimpressions about the size of a minority group hasn't been proved to have much impact on beliefs about them in the short-term, but that doesn't mean that they might never.

One thing's for sure: it's hard to imagine the fact that so many think the country is more than a quarter gay or lesbian has no impact on our public policy.

The Democratic Senate candidate can't back up family lore that she is part Indian -- but neither is there any evidence that she benefited professionally from these stories. Reuters

Elizabeth Warren is not a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.

Elizabeth Warren is not enrolled in the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

And Elizabeth Warren is not one of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee.

Nor could she become one, even if she wanted to.

Despite a nearly three week flap over her claim of "being Native American," the progressive consumer advocate has been unable to point to evidence of Native heritage except for a unsubstantiated thirdhand report that she might be 1/32 Cherokee. Even if it could be proven, it wouldn't qualify her to be a member of a tribe: Contrary to assertions in outlets from The New York Times to Mother Jones that having 1/32 Cherokee ancestry is "sufficient for tribal citizenship," "Indian enough" for "the Cherokee Nation," and "not a deal-breaker," Warren would not be eligible to become a member of any of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes based on the evidence so far surfaced by independent genealogists about her ancestry.

"These are my family stories," Warren has said. "This is what my brothers and I were told by my mom and my dad, my mammaw and my pappaw." But so far she and her campaign have been unable to establish that her family lore about being part Native American is anything more than one of the most widely shared family myths known to American genealogical researchers, myths especially prevalent in Warren's home state of Oklahoma, the state with the highest percent of Native Americans in the nation and one where the Cherokee are the largest minority group.

"There's a running joke in Indian country: If you meet somebody who you wouldn't necessarily think they're Native, but they say they're Native, chances are they'll tell you they're Cherokee," said Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton, a spokesperson for the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, which with more than 300,000 citizens is the largest Cherokee tribe.

The New England Historic Genealogical Society backtracked on Warren's ancestry, saying it has "no proof" of Cherokee descent.

Warren, now running as a Democrat to unseat incumbent Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, has been embroiled in the controversy since reports surfaced that she described herself as a minority in a law school directory and was touted as a Native American faculty member while tenured at Harvard Law School in the mid-1990s. Warren has described herself as having Cherokee and Delaware Indian ancestry. Brown's campaign has seized on the story to raise questions about whether Warren misled Harvard or sought to use distant Native American ties for professional gain, and hammered on the propriety of a blonde, blue-eyed white woman describing herself as a minority. But the biggest question raised during the fracas is the one no one has been able to answer: whether she has Native American ancestry at all.

Warren has doubled down on her description of her background and dismissed suggestions she was ever an affirmative action hire as preposterous. "I'm proud of my Native American heritage," she said Monday in an appearance on CNN. "I'm proud of my family."

Her inability to name any specific Native American ancestor has kept the story alive, though, as pundits left and right have argued the case. Supporters touted her as part Cherokee after genealogist Christopher Child of the New England Historic Genealogical Society said he'd found a marriage certificate that described her great-great-great-grandmother, who was born in the late 18th century, as a Cherokee. But that story fell apart once people looked at it more closely. The Society, it turned out, was referencing a quote by an amateur genealogist in the March 2006 Buracker & Boraker Family History Research Newsletters about an application for a marriage certificate:

Lynda Smith said, "When Neoma's son William J. Crawford married his second wife Mary LONG in Oklahoma, he stated on his marriage application that his parents were Johnathan Houston Crawford and O. C. Sarah Smith and that his mother was Cherokee Indian."

No one has surfaced that document, and there's some reason to believe it may not exist. Lynda Smith later wrote that she does not believe she ever saw it herself, according to a report by amateur genealogist Michael Patrick Leahy, who has helped lead a full court press from the right on the Warren ancestry story, along with other conservative outlets such as the Boston Herald and the blog Legal Insurrection. (Smith declined a request for comment.)

The New England Historic Genealogical Society backtracked on Warren's ancestry in a statement Tuesday, saying the group has "no proof that Elizabeth Warren's great-great-great-grandmother O.C. Sarah Smith either is or is not of Cherokee descent" and that the Society "has not expressed a position on whether Mrs. Warren has Native American ancestry, nor do we possess any primary sources to prove that she is."

The Boston Globe, which had taken the Society's earlier statements as confirmation of Warren's Cherokee heritage ("Document ties Warren kin to Cherokees"), issued a sniffy correction Tuesday about the "1894 document that was purported to list Elizabeth Warren's great-great-great grandmother as a Cherokee," noting that "Neither the society nor the Globe has seen the primary document, whose existence has not been proven."

But even were such a document to be found, Warren would not be eligible to enroll as a Cherokee based on it alone. To begin with, the Cherokee Nation doesn't accept marriage licenses as documentation of Cherokee ancestry -- let alone a document described as an application for a marriage license by a descendent of the individual claimed as Cherokee.

"Marriage licenses don't cut it," said Krehbiel-Burton of the Cherokee Nation.

Further, to enroll as a member of the Cherokee Nation, an individual must have had a direct ancestor listed among the more than 101,000 people enrolled on the "Final Rolls of the Citizens and Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory" between 1898-1914, now known as the Dawes Rolls. The Cherokee Nation is very strict about this, even keeping descendants of siblings of men and women on the rolls out of the tribe, as well as descendents of Cherokees who were living out of the area at the time the lists were drawn up in what was then Northeastern Oklahoma.

"If she does not have an ancestor listed on the Dawes Rolls, she cannot be considered Cherokee through this tribe," explained Lydia Neal, a processor with the registrar's office of the Cherokee Nation.

O.C. Sarah Smith died long before the rolls were drawn up, too far in the past to make Warren eligible for membership in the tribe (assuming Smith was Cherokee).

No direct-line relatives of Warren are listed on the Dawes Rolls, according to Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak (the doubled name is not a typo), the independent genealogist who identified Michelle Obama's slave ancestors in 2009 in a project with The New York Times.

"The Dawes Rolls don't lend support to [Warren's] claim," she told The Atlantic.

The Eastern Band of the Cherokee, for their part, have since 1963 required individuals to be at least 1/16 Cherokee to enroll -- and also to have "a direct lineal ancestor" on "the 1924 Baker Roll of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians." Even were Smith discovered to be Cherokee, Warren would not be eligible to join the tribe as someone who also lacks a direct-line ancestor on the 1924 rolls, according to Smolenyak's research.

"If she has Native American ancestry, it's likely quite a ways back and not reflected in more contemporary resources," Smolenyak said.

"In her immediate pedigree there is no one who is listing themselves as not white," the New England Historic and Genealogical Society's Child told the Boston Herald after looking at her maternal line in late April.

And while many have pointed out that the current principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, Bill John Baker, is only 1/32 Cherokee, his background is not like Warren's; he was "born and raised in Cherokee County" and is a direct descendant of "Nancy Walker Osage, an early Tahlequah business owner and Cherokee Healer" listed on the Dawes Rolls.

The difference between him and Warren is he has a direct-line ancestor clearly documented as a Cherokee whom he can name. So far, Warren has only been able to point to family lore.

Asked if Warren were claiming O.C. Sarah Smith or any other ancestor was Cherokee or if the campaign or Warren had reached out to a genealogist to research Warren's background, Warren spokesperson Alethea Harney said she'd have to look into it, then declined to answer the questions in a follow-up email exchange.

None of this to say that a Cherokee citizen couldn't look like Warren. Though it confounds many people's expectations, the Cherokee Nation considers being Cherokee as much an ethnicity as anything racial, and given the tribe's centuries-long history of intermarriage there are many Cherokee citizens today who do not look stereotypically Native American. As well, "there are a lot of folks who are legitimately Cherokee who are not eligible for citizenship," said Krehbiel-Burton, because, for example, their ancestors lived in distant states or territories when the rolls were drawn up, or because they are direct descendants of people left off the rolls for other reasons.

Fractional Native American ancestry is quite hard to prove to the standards of the U.S. government, which in many ways acts as the ultimate "birther" in this regard. Percentage of ancestry or "blood quantum" -- the creepy and antique-sounding term used by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which certifies it for two of the three Cherokee tribes -- is recognized by the Bureau based on original documents (such as birth certificates, Census records, and death certificates) through something called a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood, or CDIB.

Warren would need to be certified by the Bureau of Indian Affairs as at least 1/16 Eastern Cherokee on a CDIB to be eligible to join the Eastern Cherokee. The United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee has an even stricter enrollment cut-off: "a minimum blood quantum requirement of one quarter (1/4) degree Keetoowah Cherokee blood" documented via a CDIB plus a direct descent from someone on the Dawes Rolls. Tribal citizenship standards are set by the tribes themselves, and not the U.S. government.

Warren has never attempted to join a tribe and had no documentation of her Native ancestry claim before the controversy broke, Harney told William A. Jacobson, a Cornell Law School professor, in late April. Instead, Warren has cited the sayings of her Aunt Bea, who was given to complaining that Warren's maternal grandfather who "had high cheekbones like all of the Indians do" had not passed them on to her.

To be sure, the absence of readily located evidence of Native ancestry outside the oral tradition does not mean that Warren has no Native American ancestry. Genealogy is a complicated field, where firm answers are hard to come by quickly. Proof of distant Native American ancestry could yet surface, were Warren to hire a genealogist to do a thorough dive into her own background while she works on riding out the political storm.

But a lack of Native ancestry despite the family stories she's heard all her life would also be consistent with one of the most common genealogical myths in the United States.

"Many more Americans believe they have Native ancestry than actually do (we always suspected this, but can now confirm it through genetic testing)," said Smolenyak in an email. "In fact, in terms of wide-spread ancestral myths, this is one of the top two (the other being those who think their names were changed at Ellis Island). And someone who hails from Oklahoma would be even more prone to accept a tale of Native heritage than most."

She added: "There's also a tendency to accept what our relatives (especially our elders) tell us."

As for Warren, "I can't confirm or refute Cherokee heritage without extensive research," she said. "All I can say is that Ms. Warren's scenario is a wildly common one -- minus the public scrutiny, of course."

Should the genealogists be unable to find supporting documents, Warren could also quietly pursue familial DNA testing, which might confirm Native American ancestry, even if records of individual ancestors or their specific tribal affiliations have been lost to the mists of time. Her one-time Harvard University colleague Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. has promoted such efforts as part of helping African Americans learn more about their mixed ancestry, hosting a series of shows on PBS featuring famous figures tracking down their forebears using genetics and genealogy. (He's also pointed out that many African Americans erroneously believe they have Native American ancestors, especially Cherokee ones, making it "the biggest myth in African-American genealogy.") DNA ancestry tests are not dispositive, and even a positive result would not be useful for tribal affiliation or CDIB purposes. But it would silence her critics, and -- more importantly -- it would help her learn whether what she had spent her life thinking she knew about herself and her family was true.

"Being Native American has been part of my story I guess since the day I was born," Warren told the Boston Herald in early May. "These are my family stories, I have lived in a family that has talked about Native American and talked about tribes since I was a little girl."

Many prominent figures in American life learn, once the eye of the national press alights on them, that they are not the people who they always thought -- or said -- they were. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, for example, grew up thinking she came from a Catholic Czech family. It was not until she joined the U.S. Cabinet that she learned her parents -- not her great-great-great-grandmother, but her own parents -- were Jewish refugees who had converted and misled her about her ancestry after losing their families in the Holocaust. "This was obviously a major surprise to me. I have never been told this," she said in 1997, after the Washington Post broke the news. "The only thing I have to go by is what my mother and father told me, how I was brought up," she said.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio spent years describing himself as the "son of exiles" from Castro's Cuba, but the Post reported that "documents show that Rubio's parents came to the United States and were admitted for permanent residence more than two-and-a-half years before Castro's forces overthrew the Cuban government and took power." "I'm going off the oral history of my family," Rubio said in explaining the discrepancy.

Public scrutiny allowed New Mexico Gov. Susanna Martinez to close off a potentially damaging story-line when it was discovered that a Mexican grandfather suspected of having been an undocumented immigrant was in fact a lawfully admitted 1918 entrant who obtained U.S. citizenship in 1942. Questions had been raised about him after news reports revealed he was marked AL for "alien" on the 1930 Census, and people jumped to conclusions that this meant he was an "illegal alien" -- illustrating just how much trouble incomplete genealogical research can cause for political actors.

But sometimes genealogy also confirms family stories. Michelle Obama in 2009 learned a great deal more about the slave ancestors she always knew she must have had, and Smolenyak and The New York Times were able to "substantiate what Mrs. Obama has called longstanding family rumors about a white forebear."

Warren's story has become so politicized and such a hot potato in her race to unseat Brown that she'll be in a sticky situation no matter what she finds.

The best argument she's got in her defense is that, based on the public evidence so far, she doesn't appear to have used her claim of Native American ancestry to gain access to anything much more significant than a cookbook; in 1984 she contributed five recipes to the Pow Wow Chow cookbook published by the Five Civilized Tribes Museum in Muskogee, signing the items, "Elizabeth Warren -- Cherokee."

Warren, who graduated from the University of Houston in 1970 and got her law degree from Rutgers University in 1976, did not seek to take advantage of affirmative action policies during her education, according documents obtained by the Associated Press and The Boston Globe. On the application to Rutgers Law School she was asked, "Are you interested in applying for admission under the Program for Minority Group Students?'' "No," she replied.

While a teacher at the University of Texas, she listed herself as "white." But between 1986 and 1995, she listed herself as a minority in the Association of American Law Schools Directory of Faculty; the University of Pennsylvania in a 2005 "minority equity report" also listed her as one of the minority professors who had taught at its law school.

The head of the committee that brought Warren to Harvard Law School said talk of Native American ties was not a factor in recruiting her to the prestigious institution. Reported the Boston Herald in April in its first story on Warren's ancestry claim: "Harvard Law professor Charles Fried, a former U.S. Solicitor General who served under Ronald Reagan, sat on the appointing committee that recommended Warren for hire in 1995. He said he didn't recall her Native American heritage ever coming up during the hiring process.

"'It simply played no role in the appointments process. It was not mentioned and I didn't mention it to the faculty,' he said."

He repeated himself this week, telling the Herald: "In spite of conclusive evidence to the contrary, the story continues to circulate that Elizabeth Warren enjoyed some kind of affirmative action leg-up in her hiring as a full professor by the Harvard Law School. The innuendo is false."

"I can state categorically that the subject of her Native American ancestry never once was mentioned," he added.

That view was echoed by Law School Professor Laurence H. Tribe, who voted to tenure Warren and was also involved in recruiting her.

"Elizabeth Warren's heritage had absolutely no role in the decision to recruit her to Harvard Law School," he told the Crimson. "Our decision was entirely based on her extraordinary expertise and legendary teaching ability. This whole dispute is fabricated out of whole cloth and has no connection to reality."

And that's the second arena where an absence of evidence should have some weight. If there's no easily located evidence that Warren has Native American ancestry, there's also no evidence Warren used her family story to boost herself into a Harvard job.

A huge tell -- beyond the flat denials of two of the men who brought her to the school -- is that Warren's ancestry was not touted in 1995 in the Harvard Crimson as the Law School's first Native American hire, despite the ethnic studies movement's gathering force on the college's campus at the time and continued controversy over the lack of diversity at the law school (as highlighted at a protest involving Prof. Derrick Bell and law school student Barack Obama in 1991). The Crimson article on Warren was titled simply, "Woman Tenured at Law School."

"Liz Warren is a spectacular addition to our faculty," Law School Dean Robert Clark told the Crimson. "She is a leading scholar in the fields of bankruptcy and commercial law, and she is one of the rare legal academics to have devoted herself to a large-scale empirical research project of great relevance to legal policy making."

Compare that to the Crimson editorial that greeted Lani Guinier just three years later, which heralded her as "the first female African-American professor in the 181-year history of HLS." While this article also repeated the claim about Warren's ethnicity -- "Harvard Law School currently has only one tenured minority woman, Gottlieb Professor of Law Elizabeth Warren, who is Native American," the '98 piece said -- that information had so little penetrated the consciousness of legal circles that Guinier was quoted in the very same article saying, "Though I am the first woman of color to join the tenured faculty, I know that I will not be the last, and this is important to me." Dean Clark said he felt hiring her would "attract other top scholars of diverse backgrounds." He made no similar statement upon Warren's hire.

What Law School spokesman Michael Chmura was doing when he told the Crimson in 1996 and the Fordham Law Review in 1997 that Warren was Native American is a question for the university, not the Warren campaign. And the university is duly being pressed on that question and others about Warren's time there. (Massachusetts Republican Party Chairman Robert A. Maginn Jr., an alumnus of Harvard Law, has called on the university to do an internal investigation into whether Warren misled the university about her heritage.)

The challenge for Warren will be to withstand an ongoing barrage of attacks on the topic that seek to undermine perceptions about her character and honesty. "That Warren allowed Harvard to hold her up as an example of their commitment to diversity in the hiring of historically disadvantaged communities is an insult to all Americans who have suffered real discrimination and mistreatment, and Warren should apologize for participating in this hypocritical sham," Jim Barnett, the campaign manager for Brown said when the story broke.

Warren's campaign has tried to keep its head down and fight around the edges of the story, which it's called a distraction from the issues Massachusetts voters care about. Senate candidates have survived far more potentially damaging controversies and gone on to win. But the longer the questions about Warren linger, the harder it will be for voters to feel like they know who she really is.

Lest we forget in the uproar provoked by Vice President Biden's remarks, George W. Bush's former vice president was out front on this issue years ago.

Speaking at the Gerald R. Ford Foundation journalism awards at the National Press Club in July 2009, former Bush Vice President Dick Cheney took a stand in favor of recognizing gay marriages at the state level in response to the question, "Is some form of legalized gay marriage inevitable in the United States?"

Cheney replied:

Well, I think that freedom means freedom for everyone. As many of you know, one of my daughters is gay and it is something that, uh, we have lived with for a long time, in our family. I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish. Any kind of arrangement they wish. The question of whether or not there ought to be a federal statute that governs this, I don't support. I do believe that historically the way marriage has been regulated is at the state level. It has always been a state issue, and I think that's the way it ought to be handled today, that is on a state-by-state basis. Different states will make different decisions. But I don't have any problem with that. I think people ought to get a shot at that.

Worth recalling in light of the furor over Vice President Biden's remarks on Meet the Press on Sunday that he was "absolutely comfortable" with gay marriage.

He may have won 41 percent of the vote in the state's Democratic primary, but the odds he'll get any delegates at the Democratic convention are basically zero.

Keith Judd, a.k.a. Beaumont Federal Correctional Institution Inmate No. 11593-051 from Texarkana, Texas, won 41 percent of the vote in yesterday's Democratic presidential primary in West Virginia against incumbent President Obama.

This begs many questions, from why Obama fared so poorly in the state -- the short answer is coal -- to his ongoing issues with Appalachia -- see Salon's 2008 piece, "Why don't those hillbillies like Obama?" -- but chief among them is a more prosaic and technical concern: How does a federal inmate and convicted felon wind up on a ballot, anyhow?

West Virginia law clearly bars any person "currently under conviction for a felony, including probation or parole, or a court ruling of mental incompetence" from voting, running for or holding office, according to the Secretary of State's office. Judd is serving a sentence of 17 and a half years following a 1999 conviction for extortion involving the University of New Mexico.

So how did Judd position himself to potentially collect delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C. -- as would accrue to anyone who won more than 15 percent of the Democratic vote and filled out the appropriate paperwork?

"He filled out the certificate of announcement. I don't mean to sound flip or anything," explained Jack Glance, a spokesman for the West Virginia Secretary of State's Office. Judd also paid a $2,500 ballot-access filing fee.

"We do not have the authority to determine eligibility of candidates," he said. "That is up to the courts, so somebody has to challenge somebody's eligibility to hold office."

Whether or not someone is under conviction "is not part of the form that you fill out to run for office. Now if it comes out that you are under conviction, someone can challenge the candidacy. But no one challenged this candidacy," he said.

That doesn't mean Judd is going all the way to Charlotte. The Democratic Party of West Virginia is pretty certain he'll still be ruled ineligible, thanks to a failure to file the appropriate paperwork on behalf of delegates before party deadlines.

"It's not likely that Mr. Judd will earn any delegates to the national convention," said Derek Scarbro, executive director of the West Virginia Democratic Party. "First and foremost no one filed to run as a delegate for him" before the filing deadline of 5pm Tuesday. "And there's no fee or anything," he added.

"And then there's also some question of whether he would have been eligible to earn any delegates any way," Scarbro continued, as Judd appears not to have made the required filings with the state and national parties naming a delegation chair for his campaign. And that deadline is long past.

Scarbro blamed Judd's appearance on the ballot on the state, saying, "The ballot access rules in West Virginia are governed by the state, so that's really a question for the Secretary of State's office and they will tell you that the law in West Virgina does not prohibit people in his situation from getting on the ballot." Or, as West Virginia Democratic Party chair -- a volunteer position -- Larry Puccio put it: "I do not know how he would be able to participate on the ballot... that's not my field of expertise."

But that doesn't answer the question of why the Obama reelection campaign did not challenge Judd's ballot eligibility; this wasn't even the first time he's faced off against Obama, having also appeared on the Idaho Democratic primary ballot in 2008. An email to the campaign asking why it did not seek to get him tossed before the primary was not immediately returned.

Perhaps no one cared because West Virginia is pretty much a lost cause for Obama this fall.

Republican John McCain won the state in 2008, and Hillary Clinton took it during the Democratic primaries earlier that year. A January 2012 Gallup poll found the president with 33 percent approval rate in the state, and the state's Democratic U.S. Senator has yet to commit to voting for the president's reelection.