The story was first broken by the Daily Mail, a UK tabloid:

Kamala Harris’s husband’s first marriage ended after he got his children’s nanny pregnant, DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal.

Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff cheated on his first wife Kerstin with the blonde nanny, who also taught at their children’s pricey private school.

The woman, Najen Naylor, 47, did not deny the story when approached by DailyMail.com at her home in the New York millionaires’ playground, The Hamptons.

She would not comment, except to say, ‘I’m kind of freaked out right now.’

A close friend with direct knowledge of the affair and pregnancy told DailyMail.com that Naylor did not keep the child – though her social media shows a video of a mysterious baby girl named Brook in 2009, the year the baby would have been born.

Another  friend, Stacey Brooks, who mothered twin boys around the same time as Naylor was expecting, also did not deny any of the claims – but said she would not divulge further information without Naylor’s permission.

What’s going on here? Observations:

1. Ed Driscoll comments at Instapundit, “To ask why a story like this was broken by “a British tabloid” and not the DNC-MSM is to answer the question.” Exactly. That fact alone makes this story significant and damning. Why isn’t the mainstream news media performing its due diligence and investigating these people who have been foisted on the American public without vetting as their potential role models and leaders? We know by now, surely: this is the 2008 campaign 2.0, where only negative stories about the Republican candidates (Romney’s poor dog on the roof!) made it into the pre-election news, while potentially negative stories about the wonderful, “exciting” Democratic Presidential candidate was “uncovered” long after the election (Obama wrote that he ate a dog.) It is damning that a British tabloid was the first to reveal the sordid tale. Only then was it “news fit to print.”

2. I found the New York Times story through a link. I could not find it anywhere in today’s print version or the digital version. Even though the Daily Mail reveal was yesterday, the Times didn’t think the story was worth highlighting the next day. Gee, I wonder why.

3. There have been remarkably few scandals involving First Ladies or potential First Ladies. The most extreme was the bigamy scandal surrounding Andrew Jackson’s wife Rachel. Mary Lincoln’s long bout with various emotional problems also plagued her husband, but were not a major news item during the Civil War. Since the dawn of the 20th Century, however, First Ladies have been largely left out of the metaphorical crosshairs regarding their character and past conduct, certainly before their husbands were elected. Hillary Clinton is the primary exception to this rule.

4. I believe that in many ways the character and beliefs of a Presidential spouse is more relevant to a voter’s decision than the identity of the Vice-President. Few VPs, maybe none, have had as much influence over Presidential decisions as Abigail Adams, Dolly Madison, Julia Grant, Edith Wilson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Lady Bird Johnson, Nancy Reagan, Hillary, Barack Obama, Jill Biden of course and perhaps others. It is naive to believe that these trusted and (usually) beloved people who live with Presidents cannot and will not inject themselves into policy and political opinions.

5. Guilt by association is an unfair way to judge anyone, but it is fair to have legitimate doubts about a leader’s values and character who voluntarily attaches themselves for life to a bounder. It is especially relevant to Harris’s candidacy at a time when her strategy is obviously to let the public know as little as possible about her before the election.

6. What happened to the love child? That’s a valid topic for inquiry, especially when the husband of an aggressive abortion advocate is involved. Is she alive? What does she think about the abortion issue, since she would have been a prime candidate to have her life snuffed out in the womb? Is anyone going to ask Emhoff if he would have favored an abortion if it could have hidden the affair and saved his marriage? Harris’s husband has been an advocate for men to push for pro-abortion laws. No wonder.

6. The obvious “whataboutism” retort to any criticism of the potential First Anointed Couple is that Harris’s opponent has famously cheated on more than one of his wives, so Emhoff’s crummy behavior “isn’t the worst thing.” But the whole Democratic Party argument since 2020 has been that their candidates are squeaky clean: they don’t lie, they are pure as the driven snow, they never break laws, they would never breach a democratic norm, yada yada. That claim is so at odds with the facts that it approaches satire. Democrats and their candidates (as well as their candidates’ close advisors and associates) should be held to their own alleged standards. They aren’t

7. After I had just about completed this post, I saw that Althouse had posted on essentially the same topic and concluded that Emhoff’s past indiscretions are irrelevant to the election.

She’s wrong.