Representative Bruce Braley of Iowa would like to become Senator Bruce Braley of Iowa. In pursuit of this ambition, he once disparaged a sitting Iowa senator as merely a “farmer from Iowa who never went to law school,” while he, Braley, was a real, sure enough lawyer. With a degree and everything.

He was speaking to a room full of lawyers but he had evidently forgotten that candidates can’t be too careful these days. As witness Mitt Romney and his musings on the 47 percent.