The new Democratic front-runner seems to have been caught in a big fib. And now Sen. Elizabeth Warren has doubled down.

Warren Falsifies Her Background … Again?

Yesterday, we mentioned that Elizabeth Warren’s campaign staple, about being rejected from a second year of teaching special needs kids because she was visibly pregnant, was contradicted by her own words in 2007.

To refresh: Warren previously said she left her job as a speech pathologist for disabled children in 1971 because she lacked the educational credentials.

And I went back to graduate school, and took a couple of courses in education, and said, “I don’t think this is going to work out for me. And I was pregnant with my first baby, so I had a baby, and I stayed home for a couple of years.”

Warren, in a CBS interview published Monday night, doubled down on her new version of events. She insisted again she was dumped because she was “visibly pregnant.”

“All I know is I was 22 years old. I was six months pregnant, and the job that I had been promised for the next year was going to someone else. The principal said they were going to hire someone else for the job.”

She explained why she gave a different explanation in 2007 as her now deciding to “open up” about her life.

Unfortunately, for Warren, contemporary accounts tell a different tale.

They Wanted Her Back

The Washington Free Beacon has evidence her story is as fake as Joe Biden’s hair plugs.

Seems they’ve gotten hold of minutes from a Riverdale, N.J. Board of Education meeting from April 21, 1971. The minutes show:

[T]he board voted unanimously on a motion to extend Warren a “2nd year” contract for a two-days-per-week teaching job. That job is similar to the one she held the previous year, her first year of teaching. Minutes from a board meeting held two months later, on June 16, 1971, indicate that Warren’s resignation was “accepted with regret.”

In fact, the school board was so stoked to have Warren back they voted by unanimous roll call to give her a “provisional certificate” in speech pathology.

CBS also found newspaper accounts from the time.

The Paterson News, a local paper, reported that summer that Warren was “leaving to raise a family.” The next month, a story about the school board hiring a replacement said Warren had “resigned for personal reasons,” even though the board had voted to “appoint” Warren to the same speech pathology job that April.

So if Warren is to be believed, nobody bothered to tell Warren of the board’s decision. But they did tell the Paterson News.

Borrowed Pity

Of course, it’s possible Warren is telling the truth. The principal could have decided to ignore the school board. And it’s not as if what she says happened to her didn’t happen to others. In fact, CBS found two teachers around at the time who said pregnant teachers who were showing after five months did tend to get shown the door.

However, it is also clear from the record the school board wanted Warren herself back. Badly enough to vote unanimously to give her a provisional certificate to make up for the education she lacked.

It is also clear that Warren also has a history of fudging her background for personal and political gain.

Twisting the Past to Create a Persona

Warren is painting herself as a victim of sexual discrimination. Creating a false portrait is nothing new. She famously rose the ranks pretending to be Native American. The revelation of this latest apparent deception comes as Warren is surging in the polls. Right as she seemed to have survived the humiliation over her Native American DNA results … and disastrous roll-out.

However, Warren’s “I was denied a second year teaching special needs kids because they saw that I was pregnant” schtick shouldn’t come as a surprise. She’s traveling the trail blazed by Barack Obama.

Obama: The Man and the Myth

His autobiography Dreams From My Father had so much mythologizing about his life it could have been written by Parson Weems. No, there weren’t stories of Obama cutting down a cherry tree or tossing a quarter from one Hawaiian island to another. But he did invent girlfriends, events, and according to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, mischaracterized his coming to faith at Rev. Wright’s church.

Even his own half-brother Mark Obama Ndesandjo disputes some of the book’s stories. Ndesandjo calls the best-seller “a tool for fashioning an identity.” (He also recalled his first meeting with Barack Jr. “I remember that when I spoke with him about the heroes of Western culture, he rolled his eyes impatiently.”)

But since the media had no interest in really digging into Obama’s background, the “identity” became the reality. How hard will the media press Elizabeth Warren?

Will It Harm Her?

Will Warren be harmed by this week’s revelations? Depends on whether her Democratic rivals want to use it against her in next week’s debate. Now that she’s the de facto front runner, will someone try to take her out? Tulsi Gabbard is in this debate. In the second debate, Gabbard pretty much ended Kamala Harris with a single, powerful riff exposing her background as an inquisitorial prosecutor. Gabbard also exposed Harris’ glass jaw. Harris still hasn’t recovered. Will Gabbard go after Warren?

Warren hasn’t yet faced any serious blows in a debate. Can she take the punch? Will any even be thrown?

Look at Joe Biden. The Democratic candidates have been circling the wagons to protect Biden from the obviously damning quid pro quo allegations involving his son and Ukraine. Even Harris, who just a couple months ago was calling Biden a racist. Now she is saying “Leave Joe Biden alone.”

Will History Help Her?

Warren may also have history to help her. Mythologizing candidates has a long and colorful history in America. In the decades after Lincoln, I don’t even think they let you run for president unless you had set foot in a log cabin.

Look at the word “OK.” It was popularized by President Martin Van Buren during his 1836 campaign. His slogan was “Vote for OK” in reference to his nickname “Old Kinderhook.” Why’d he have that nickname? To draw comparisons to President Andrew “Old Hickory” Jackson. (Van Buren was no Jackson. But it did help him win.)

Think of Teddy Roosevelt: Rough Rider. Rugged outdoor adventurer. Populist. Sure. But he was really from a very wealthy, elite and ritzy New York background.

How about Jimmy Carter, peanut farmer? The plain, simple man from Plains, Georgia. Sure, he had a farm. But he’d also been a governor, submarine officer and engineer. (Technically, his Naval Academy degree was a Bachelor of Science, but he did extensive course work in engineering.)

Bill Clinton, the Man from Hope. Well, he may have been born in Hope, but he grew up in the rowdy town of Hot Springs.

Heck, Hillary Clinton, the “smartest person in Washington.” But not smart enough to go campaign in Wisconsin.

Victim in Chief

As for Warren, she road the “woman of color” bus to the top reaches of higher education. Now she’s reaching for the highest office in the land as “The Scrappy, Beer-Swilling People’s Champion Who Survived a Lowly Background and Rampant Sexual Discrimination to Fight for YOU.”

We know it plays in academia and the media. Will it play in Peoria? Will her apparent fib be “OK” with voters?

Al Perrotta is the Managing Editor of The Stream and co-author, with @JZmirak, of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration. You can follow him at @StreamingAl. And if you aren’t already, please follow The Stream at @Streamdotorg.