On Wendy Davis, it turns out that she elided aspects of her biography to burnish a particular image. I don’t think this will be a long term problem, anymore than Newt Gingrich’s history of philandering was an issue for social conservatives. Those who were with her will stay with her, and those who were against her will have more reasons to be against her. But as someone with only a passing familiarity with her biography the key detail that comes out of the piece is that Wendy Davis misrepresented a major aspect of her class background, and therefore how much hardship she overcame to get to Harvard law school. Though she was obviously not born with a silver spoon, by her mid-20s Davis had married a man with an upper middle class income (he was a attorney with a real estate related business). This makes the fact that she finished college, and matriculated at Harvard law, somewhat less impressive than the image of her has a single mother, which was definitely what even a high-information voter would have assumed was the case from the reports in the media.
Granted, juggling two children and finishing college, let alone getting into Harvard, is still highly noteworthy and laudable, and not a trivial accomplishment. But the narrative arc here is one of bourgeois striving, and pooling of the resources of a married couple where one earned substantially more than a middle class income. It seems that most of the time when politicians try to sell you a tale of overcoming lack of privilege, many of the details fall apart upon closer inspection. That probably tells us a lot about how much deprivation actually is overcome in American society, and how often those nearer the bottom reach the top.
Addendum: The allegations of focusing on one’s career as opposed to family, adultery, and selfish exploitation of ex-husband for her own ends (e.g., staying with him long enough for him to apply his resources to paying off her loans), are not shocking. They’re probably not atypical for most elite politicians in terms of behavior because of their average personality type (i.e., narcissistic). I wouldn’t be surprised if they pan out (in any case, it doesn’t seem like most people behave like saints in the midst of a divorce). The qualification that she should have been more “precise” with her language is laughable coming from someone with a Harvard legal education, but exactly the kind of slippery argument that a politician would make. But that’s democracy. It tends to reward that personality type from what I can tell. I don’t know that it matters for governance one way or another.