Box status: Checked. Have there been any prominent Democrats today, incidentally, who’ve ridden to Rosen’s defense, even if only to say that her point’s been misconstrued? Axelrod and Messina, shrewdly anticipating the bomb blast to come, ducked and covered last night by criticizing her right away on Twitter for what she said. I thought for sure that America’s most lifelike talking-points robot would mumble something this morning about “distractions” from the war that Mitt Romney wants to wage against women and children and seniors and etc etc etc, but even her operating system can’t run that program. Just as I’m writing this, the right’s favorite liberal feminist has a piece up at the Daily Beast scolding Rosen for what she said. Will no top Democratic pol help a blogger out with some free content by wading into this clusterfark on Rosen’s behalf? C’mon, Pelosi. You know you wanna.

The lingering question: Did Rosen stumble into this attack on her own or, given her chumminess with Team Hopenchange, was there maybe possibly conceivably a little nudge from someone somewhere about targeting Ann Romney? Ann is, as John Nolte explains, a major asset to Romney on the trail potentially. With Obama already betting heavily on a gender gap in November, framing Ann as some sort of socialite layabout caricature would reduce her appeal to women and push the all-important “rich parasites” element to O’s class-warfare message. I’m firmly in the “Rosen blundered” camp on this question, but that’s not necessarily contradictory to the idea of O’s campaign wanting to neutralize Ann early somehow. Could be that Rosen was looking to do that for them and just did a horribly bad job of it.