by Jodi Kantor<\/p>\n
The United States quietly passed a milestone this spring, mostly lost amid the clamor of the presidential race: for the first time, neither party\u2019s candidate is a white Protestant. The contenders are both from outsider groups that were once persecuted, and despite Harvard degrees and notable successes, both men have felt the sting of being treated as somehow strange or different.<\/p>\n
The campaigns have mostly been in a state of d\u00e9tente on identity politics, trying to avoid mutually assured destruction. But the outsider backgrounds of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have marked the race in subtler ways, shaping the candidates and campaigns, causing them to mirror each other in many ways.<\/p>\n