Tom Nides, who stands a good chance of being Obama’s next chief of staff should Obama get a second term, is married to Virginia Moseley. Ms. Moseley is a senior producer at ABC News. We know Martha Raddatz, who will moderate tonight’s debate, was once married to the Obama FCC Chairman. They have, however, been divorced for a good while.I’ve been compiling all these relations and I have had a number of people, reporters and others, reach out to me to say it is unfair to tie a reporter to a political spouse.Several of the arguments made have been very well reasoned and I understand where they are coming from. But, I outlined why I think it matters here.

Believe it or not, many Americans in this country would have a hard time believing that a person could be married to an abortion rights activist without being okay with that activism. And those Americans would more likely than not conclude that the reporter married to the abortion rights activist, the Democratic operative, the Joe Biden communications director, etc. share their spouse’s liberal world view. If we are honest about it, we’d have to admit that in most cases the Americans concluding that would be absolutely right. There are exceptions to all of these, but then they are the exceptions — these relationships between people of opposite world-views also seem to be much more common inside the NYC-DC corridor of press, politics, and power than out in fly over country, which adds to the cynicism many Americans have for the press and politics. Any conservative pundit who is friends with a liberal pundit in Washington knows exactly what I’m talking about when it comes to this cynicism.

Not to rub salt in wounds — and a few folks really are aggravated with me doing this and I get it, I really do, but stand by it — but I do think it is worth pointing out that more than one of the people who reached out to me about this were perfectly okay with stories suggesting Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas could not do his job on the Supreme Court because his wife, Ginni Thomas, worked for conservative activist organizations.I have a hard time reconciling why Clarence Thomas may have a conflict because of what his spouse does, but reporters do not because of what their spouses do.