Another Elizabeth Warren heritage story, Massachusetts electorate still yawns

Elizabeth Warren campaign rally It's the non-story story that won't die, no matter how much voters don't want to hear about it anymore. Yet another story on Elizabeth Warren's Cherokee heritage demonstrates that her claims had nothing to do with her career advancement.

'At some point after I was hired by them, I . . . provided that information to the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard,'' she said in a statement issued by her campaign. 'My Native American heritage is part of who I am, I'm proud of it and I have been open about it.'' [...]

Two key people who recruited her to Harvard have said they did not know of her purported heritage or take it into account when hiring her. The school did not promote her as a Native American when she was hired, despite the fact that it was under intense pressure to diversify its faculty with more minorities.

At some point, one would think the Massachusetts press (not counting the Herald, which doesn't count as journalism) would take a cue from their readers and just move on. We've already had one poll showing the smear has been rejected by voters, and that a huge majority of them don't care: 69 percent said Warren's Native American heritage listing is "not a significant story."

The Springfield Republican and MassLive.com found that out directly just this week, from the horses' mouths, when they interviewed 24 voters selected to proportionally represent the state's electorate. The people already supporting either candidate hadn't changed positions, but the unaffiliated voters gave a collective yawn, with three-quarters of them saying they just don't care. Here's a representative quote:

Rosalind Davidson, 85, an unaffiliated voter and retired teacher from Cambridge, said she does not believe Warren benefited from listing her heritage. 'She is so competent she certainly doesn't need anything to verify her ability as a professor and lawyer,' Davidson said. 'They were just hunting for something.' Davidson said the truth about Warren's ancestry doesn't matter to her. 'Maybe she is (Native American), ok, fine. Maybe she isn't, ok, fine.'

"They were just hunting for something." Yep. Scott Brown, and the hardcore of his supporters (the core some national bloggers'Rachel Weiner of The Fix, I'm looking at you'think is critical, however small it might be) will keep harping on this, with the racist and sexist Herald flogging it for all it's worth. Which has proven to be by now pretty much nothing.

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