The disgust factor.

"According to some assessments, a pivotal factor in last week’s elections was a sense of disgust with the President—and one of the results was a sharp increase in the number of female candidates and winners," wrote David Remnick in that New Yorker piece I've already blogged about this morning.

I was struck by the idea that rising disgust had potential to lift the Democratic Party to new success, because a couple days ago we were talking about a test that uses susceptibility to feelings of disgust to determine how conservative or liberal you are. There, I noted reports of research that sees liberals as resistant to disgust. Psychology Today had a piece called "Are You Easily Disgusted? You May Be a Conservative," which said:

Evidence suggests that harm avoidance and the need for fairness underlie people's moral judgments in a number of cultures. While liberals rely primarily on these two values, conservatives also rely on desires for group loyalty, authoritative structure, and, most importantly here, purity. Following this logic, Kevin [Smith] and other researchers became interested in the potential for a relation between disgust and political orientations. They speculated that conservatives are more disgust sensitive than liberals as a result of their concern with purity-related norms and that this difference would manifest itself on issues that some may associate with sexual purity (e.g., homosexual sex and, therefore, gay rights).

Sure enough, Kevin and his co-authors found that conservatives are more easily disgusted than liberals....

If we assume this research has got it right, Democrats might want to reconsider the use of the disgust factor. Maybe the effort to disgust liberals will fall flat, and they won't get excited and out to the polls to vote for Democrats. Meanwhile, the disgust talk might stimulate conservatives, and they'll be running out to vote, presumably for Republicans. Or do you think the disgust-oriented ones, the erstwhile Republicans, will go for Democrats because the Republicans — Donald Trump, Roy Moore, etc. — have been successfully portrayed as just so disgusting?

I'm trying to look at the big picture, the long-term effect, and I think there's some risk for the Democrats in going too far into sexual negativity. I think those of us who are disposed toward liberalism — and I say "us" because I came up 59% liberal on that disgust test — will tune out or come to view them as too fussy and nosy about sex.

ADDED: I'm talking about persuasion at the emotional level, so I naturally thought of Scott Adams's book "Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter," which I've read in full. Adams talks about how persuasion is all about emotion, but he doesn't get into the role of disgust. The word only comes up once, quoting the famous Megyn Kelly debate question that began, “You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs,’ and ‘disgusting animals . . .’” Trump (as you must remember) broke in to say, “Only Rosie O’Donnell.”

It wasn't Kelly's effort at using disgust that got Adams going. It was Trump's interruption:

He created an emotion-triggering visual image (Rosie O’Donnell) that sucked all the attention from the question to the answer, and it wasn’t even a real answer...  He also picked a personality who was sure to trigger the emotions of his base. Republicans generally don’t like Rosie O’Donnell because of her outspoken liberal views. Trump knew his Republican base has a strong negative reaction to O’Donnell, so he bonded with them on that point. This is the persuasion method known as pacing and leading. First you match your audience’s emotional condition to gain trust, and later you are in a position to lead them. 

Another way to look at that is Trump was able to stimulate conservatives — the disgust-susceptible human beings — by confronting them suddenly with a particular "disgusting" woman.

But why should Trump benefit from attaching himself to disgustingness? Elsewhere in the book, Adams says Carly Fiorina made a terrible mistake when she attempted to showcase her opposition to abortion by vividly describing a botched abortion:

Fiorina paired her brand with a dead baby. I knew voters wouldn’t want to think about Fiorina’s horrible story of a dead baby for one second longer than they needed to. I doubt anyone consciously interpreted the situation as I describe it. But humans don’t make political decisions for rational reasons.

If that's correct, maybe it shouldn't have worked for Trump to "pair his brand" with a (purportedly) disgusting woman. You could say Trump was (essentially) offering to defend us from disgusting women, but Fiorina was offering to defend us from dead babies. Adams says "Fiorina lost support because she polluted her brand beyond redemption by associating it with the most horrible image one could ever imagine, on live television." He's really talking about disgust there: the emotional reaction to something that seems "horrible" and "polluted." There's an idea that particular, reasoned arguments don't matter. If what is disgusting gets all over the person, we'll feel aversion, at an instinctive emotional level. And that doomed Fiorina.

But why, then, wasn't Trump doomed? Maybe Trump would have fared worse if Megyn Kelly had been able to ask her question uninterrupted, speaking generically about women and Trump's bad mouth. She sought to ruin him by making him disgusting to the disgust-susceptible conservatives, and he interposed the image of a lady comedian. It's funny. It's all in good fun.

Apophasis.

I used the word in a comment just now [where it, unfortunately, misautocorrected]. And I'm reading the Wikipedia article on the subject. This jumped out:

In 1988, President Ronald Reagan said of Michael Dukakis, a presidential candidate who was rumored to have received psychological treatment, "Look, I'm not going to pick on an invalid."

US President Donald Trump has been noted for repeatedly using apophasis. In 2015, Trump said of fellow Republican presidential candidate and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, "I promised I would not say that she ran Hewlett-Packard into the ground, that she laid off tens of thousands of people and she got viciously fired. I said I will not say it, so I will not say it." In 2016, he tweeted of journalist Megyn Kelly, “I refuse to call [her] a bimbo, because that would not be politically correct."

I didn't remember Reagan as being such an asshole! Sheds a different light on present-day efforts to distinguish Trump from Reagan, like Maureen Dowd in her column today "Donald, This I Will Tell You":

You mused that a good role model would be Ronald Reagan. As you saw it, Reagan was a big, good-looking guy with a famous pompadour; he had also been a Democrat and an entertainer. But Reagan had one key quality that you don’t have: He knew what he didn’t know.

You both resembled Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloons, floating above the nitty-gritty and focusing on a few big thoughts. But President Reagan was confident enough to accept that he needed experts below, deftly maneuvering the strings.

You’re just careering around on your own, crashing into buildings and losing altitude, growling at the cameras and spewing nasty conspiracy theories, instead of offering a sunny smile, bipartisanship, optimism and professionalism....

Oh, no! That was just too metaphorical.

"The truth is that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are two sides of the same coin," says Carly Fiorina, endorsing Ted Cruz.

"My fellow conservatives ... you have a very important job on Tuesday and I say to you it is time to take our party back.... It is time to take our government back. It is time to take our country back and so it is time now to unite behind the one man who can beat Donald Trump, who can beat Hillary Clinton."

Now that Carly has endorsed Ted...

I'm for Ted!

I was already for Ted.

I'll take her view into account and might tip toward Ted.

She disrespected Trump and I'm even more for Trump than before.

I'm not too affected and will probably go for someone else.

No effect and I'm for someone other than Ted.

 

pollcode.com free polls

Christie is dropping out.

They say.

UPDATE: Christie is out, and so is Fiorina.

Another GOP debate.

1. The undercard is starting now. Be careful. It can wear you out before the real thing begins.

2. Carly Fiorina, for some reason, thinks it's worth saying that she "loves" spending time with her husband, unlike some people (i.e., Hillary). That was a sour note to begin on.

3. I didn't stick with it. Did you?

4. I'm not writing that much (so far), but check out my son John's live blog, here. Sample:

9:09 — Chris Christie, in response to a question about when he'd use military action, starts out: "On Tuesday night, I watched story time with Barack Obama, and it sounded like everything in the world is just amazing!" His answer to the question is that he'd use it only when "absolutely necessary" to protect America — not to be "the world's policeman."

5. Jeb says the world is "torn asunder." "Asunder" is a "mid-12c., contraction of Old English on sundran."

6. Cruz came ready to respond to the NYT article about the loan he took to run for the Senate and the natural-born-citizen issue. There was a vivid back-and-forth between Trump and Cruz in which Trump purported not to care about whether Cruz was natural born but worried only about the lawsuit the Democrats might bring later on and Cruz said he wouldn't take legal advice from Donald Trump and savaged Larry Tribe as a big lefty and supporter of Hillary Clinton.

7. Trump: "I will gladly accept the mantle of anger." That comes in an answer pushing back Nikki Haley's SOTU response, which dinged Trump for anger.

8. This show is on too late for me. I need to pack it in for the night. Trump got the better of Cruz in that heartfelt paean to New York, and Cruz was left nodding and applauding. But more about that and the rest tomorrow.

Hillary seems to have adopted the vocal mannerisms of Carly Fiorina.

It's uncanny. I was watching this video because it was the subject of a Des Moines Register piece titled "Did Trump impugn fifth-grader's question to Clinton?"...



... and I was struck by how different Hillary sounded, the catch in her throat, the strong but murmuring quality, the pauses that make you feel that she's really thinking and feeling. She sounds like somebody. It hit me: Carly Fiorina!

By the way, did Trump impugn fifth-grader's question to Clinton? Well, first, the kid didn't even ask a question. She just made a statement, that some people shun her and talk about her behind her back because she has asthma. Obviously, Donald Trump had nothing to say about that, but Trump did call it a "pathetic" "staged event." It was a staged event, 600 Iowans crowded into a school gym, but I don't know how planned the encounter with the girl was. Hillary used the girl for a political performance. She said:

"I really do think we need more love and kindness in our country. I think we are not treating each other with the respect and the care that we should show toward each other. And that’s why it’s important to stand up to bullies wherever they are, and why we shouldn’t let anybody bully his way into the presidency, because that is not who we are as Americans.”

I can't tell from the Des Moines Register whether that particular statement was what Trump was tweeting about. He said:

The Hillary Clinton staged event yesterday was pathetic. Be careful Hillary as you play the war on women or women being degraded card.

So I take it there were more gender politics going on. Maybe people were invited to share stories of victimhood, and that's what the little girl did. It would help if the Des Moines Register would provide the context rather than just act like an arm of the Clinton campaign.

"Why Dogs Are Better Than Cats With Carly Fiorina."

"President Obama ate one of your cousins."

Live-blogging the big GOP debate.

1. Watch along with me. Comment. I'll just be expanding this numbered list of insights. What do we expect? Fireworks? Boredom? Somebody — Kasich?? — making a showy play for attention?

2. My son John is live-blogging too. I recommend that.

3. These CNBC commentators are horrible. Do they even know they're on television? Talking over each other, desperate, contentless. Ugh! They talk like they're drunk.

4. Biggest weakness? Kasich leads off by not answering the question at all, forthrightly refusing. Huckabee denies having weakness, or... he plays by the rules. Jeb says he's impatient. Rubio says he's not sure it's a weakness, but he's optimistic. Trump says he's "too trusting" and if people let him down, he never forgives. Carson says his weakness is not seeing himself in the position of President (until people convinced him). Fiorina says she was told she doesn't smile enough (and she smiles). Cruz says his biggest weakness is he's passionate, he's a fighter, and he's not the guy you want to have a beer with, but he's the one to drive you home. Christie points out the weaknesses of the Democrats. And Rand Paul complains about the budget deal, and he's beginning tomorrow to filibuster it.

5. Trump is asked if his campaign is a cartoon, and he says that's not a very nice question.

6. Carly wants the tax code reduced to 3 pages (from 73,000). The moderators are interrupting and arguing way too much.

7. Big cheer for Rubio's criticism of the Sun Sentinel for being biased in favor of Democrats. Jeb gets on Rubio for missing Senate votes, and Rubio catches him for hypocrisy.

8. Cruz launches into a criticism of the questions the moderators have asked so far. It's a vivid indictment and it gets a big cheer. This interchange ends in near chaos. Cruz really tried to intimidate the moderators.

9. This debate is so stressful and ugly. The moderators are so disrespectful and the candidates are all yelling. Almost all. Carson will never yell.

10. The audience (at the University of Colorado in Boulder) showed tremendous support for Ben Carson. It cheered wildly when he attacked the questioners for criticizing his "vetting process" because he didn't prevent a webpage from using a photograph of him.

11. Trump goes on about those terrible super PACs. And Rubio says: "The Democrats have the greatest super PAC. It's called the mainstream media." That gets a big cheer from the audience.

12. Subsidies are "a bunch of crap," says Carson.

13. Christie is highly critical of the moderators: "Even in New Jersey, what you're doing is rude."

14. Rand Paul wants "a government so small you can barely see it."

15. "In your heart of hearts, you can't wait to hear a debate between Hillary Clinton and Carly Fiorina," says Carly Fiorina.

16. Ben Carson thanks the audience for being so attentive.

17. Trump will make good deals for America because he made the deal that got the debate reduced from 3 hours to 2.

18. Who did best? Maybe Christie. Maybe Cruz.

19. Did anyone even mention Ronald Reagan tonight? What happened? That was weird. 

Fiorina's peak — at 15% — is in the past. She's down 11 points to 4%.

That's 7th place in the new CNN/ORC poll.

Trump and Carson romp on the peak, at 27% and 22%, and nobody else is higher than 8%.

How does it feel, losing the dream of a tough female fighting Hillary? The embodiment of feminism as conservatism, gone poof.

"At age 48, Frank [Fiorina] decided to retire to (gasp!) to support his wife's career as well as take care of his two daughters..."

"'...something that even her own father didn't quite understand at first."

"As [my father] got older and realized how important a role Frank played in my success — and my happiness, beyond that — he came to really appreciate him,' [Carly Fiorina] said.

Frank has donned several different hats while running his wife's team. While she was CEO of Hewlett-Packard and later when she ran for the U.S. Senate in 2010, Frank would sometimes serve as her personal bodyguard. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Frank received a permit to carry a concealed weapon in 2000.

More in this WaPo article from last May, a time Carly Fiorina "hardly registers in national polls." The reporter follows Frank around as he pushes a shopping cart through the aisles of Costco for 45 minutes and buys "[b]ottled water, toilet paper, paper towels, cashews, Goldfish and a toothbrush."

Key tag: single-earner household.

Why did CNN cut the length of the Democratic candidates' debate from 3 hours to 2 hours?

No reason is given.

Meade speculates: "Bernie and Hillary are too old to stand for 3 hours."

Me: "We can't sit through 3 hours."

From my 36-point live-blog of the 3-hour GOP debate:

26. How long is this darned thing? I thought 2 hours. Then I thought 2 and a half. Now, I'm thinking it's going to go on for 3 hours. This is madness!...

35. After the debate, in an interview, Trump says what he learned is that he can stand for 3 hours. Yeah, that was a severe challenge — having to stand there for 3 hours. It was hard enough to sit through!

And the woman has to do the standing in heels, as HuffPo pointed out after the 3-hour GOP debate:

"I watched eagerly when Carly Fiorina first walked on stage to see how high her heels were," said our very own Arianna Huffington. "I immediately recognized the heels she was wearing, as I have the same Manolo Blahnik pumps in black. They're high -- 3 1/2 inches! I personally wear them when I know I'm sitting down! I love them and completely understand why she chose them, in terms of style. But, as the debate dragged on, I wondered how uncomfortable she must have been, especially since she didn't just have to stand there looking elegant but being alert and firing on all cylinders...."

But the height of the heel aside, it reminds us of what was once said about actor/dancer Fred Astaire and his legendary dance partner: "Sure he was great, but don't forget Ginger Rogers did everything he did backwards ... and in high heels!"

Who originated that Ginger Rogers line? Ann Richards? No. Frank and Ernest:

Yes, I watched "Saturday Night Live" with Hillary.

I thought the cold open with the Trump impersonator was very entertaining. I even liked Miley Cyrus singing "My Way" as the monologue. But Hillary did fine. Of course, the show loves her and exalted her as much as they could get away with... or more... that shoe stuff in the end was embarrassing. But Hillary herself looked good — maybe she should dress like a bartender all the time — and she showed some comic spark.

ADDED: By the way, when did it become a thing for women to wear flesh-colored shoes? Is it related to that awful trend of ice skaters wearing flesh-colored tights that come down over the skates? "Exhibit A: Sarah Hughes, 2002 Olympic Gold Medalist":



Notice that in the first GOP debate, Carly Fiorina was wearing those seemingly ubiquitous flesh-tone shoes:



It's like they're saying: Don't consider me to be wearing shoes at all. Just think of my feet as an inconspicuous continuation of my legs.

In the second debate, however, she upgraded to shoes that were shoes!

"Carly Fiorina has feminists on the defensive."

"Once you realize that most of what’s marketed as feminism in the United States is just Democratic Party agitprop, this all makes sense. So does the New York Times’ lopsided 4-against-1 debate format."

Says Glenn Reynolds linking to a NYT "Room for Debate" collection of 5 essays on the topic "Is Carly Fiorina a Feminist?" I'll take his word for it that only 1 of the 5 answers yes.

I had a flashback to the time I was invited to write for a collection like this. I think the question was "Who is a feminist?" I forget what current issue made that seem like the right question to ask, and I'm sure my answer was something along the lines of: It depends on how you define the term.

20 minutes later... That was surprisingly hard to find. The question was "Who Gets To Be a Feminist?" — which is a a strange way to put it, suggesting that there's a gate-keeper deciding who's allowed in the club. It was in DoubleX at Slate back in October 2010. I wrote:

A "loophole" that lets candidates — like Carly Fiorina — get away with "coordinating" with Super Pacs.

The NYT seems to be sounding an alert over something completely bland and banal:

The Federal Election Commission forbids direct coordination between campaigns and super PACs, lest candidates effectively rely almost entirely on the huge, unlimited donations of a small number of billionaires. But in 2016, the groups are aggressively exploiting gray areas and loopholes in the rules, few of which the commission – deadlocked with its three Republican and three Democratic members – has hastened to close.

Oh, those terrible deadlocks. Now, what is this loophole that the Commission is allowing to exist?

Candidates and super PACs are free to coordinate their plans if the information is shared in public view.... posting video on YouTube, and... signal[ing] a preference for positive advertising [on] Twitter...

Mrs. Fiorina and other candidates... have taken it a step further: making available advance travel schedules.... Under the rules, Mrs. Fiorina’s super PAC... could not even call her campaign staff members to see where and when she is headed next. But Mrs. Fiorina has cleverly sidestepped that prohibition: Her campaign has created a public Google calendar, which it updates weeks into the future, showing the events she has planned.

Putting video on YouTube, tweeting about the kind of message you want to get out, and having an on-line calendar of upcoming events... that counts as "clever"? I guess "cleverly" bolsters the characterization of the permissibility of this speech as a "loophole" in the campaign finance law. But it's simple, obvious free speech from the candidate. I don't see how the Commission could change this or why we should feel that it should change.

The Times has a quote from campaign finance lawyer: “Essentially, it inoculates a case of coordination by making it public.” Like there's a real disease here. Inoculates.

"Is [Carly Fiorina] really, truly so filled with rage? Probably not."

"When she ran unsuccessfully against Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) in 2010, she was a moderate, pro-business Republican. That erstwhile profile would get her nowhere in this year’s presidential race, however, when everyone is scrambling to get to the right of everyone else and 'moderate' is a dirty word. One has to wonder if the showy posture of ultraconservative anger isn’t the biggest lie of all."

Writes Eugene Robinson.

I wonder if Hillary Clinton is watching Fiorina's rise and trying to learn something about how a woman can present herself in an exciting, compelling way. Robinson, I suspect, would only like to say that it's those terrible Republicans who respond to anger, but Democrats are responding to Bernie Sanders and he always sounds and looks angry. (Take any video of him, pause it randomly and repeatedly, and marvel or giggle at how every freeze frame is another angry face.)

And on "Meet the Press" the other day, when asked whether Hillary Clinton is "in tune with the mood of the electorate," Andrea Mitchell said no, because "She's not angry enough." Mitchell seemed to think it would be too hard for Hillary to feed the hunger for rage: "[I]t's hard for her to be angry because then you've got, you know, Donald Trump saying, 'She's shrill,' which is a sexist word, let's face it. But she has to get around that. But the anger, the passion is all on people going on the attack, whether it's, you know, whether it's Donald Trump, whether it's Carly Fiorina, or whether it's Bernie Sanders."

If Carly can do it, why not Hillary? Carly undermines that pro-Hillary sexism argument, that if Hillary displays emotion, she'll be judged according to standards that are only imposed on women. There are reasons for a candidate to eschew the anger mode, but Carly makes it harder for Hillary to claim she must be flat and bland lest people see her as a screeching harridan.

"Carly Fiorina is an ice-cold shade queen debate princess and I’m in love with and terrified of her."

A quote from a feminist in a NYT article titled "Carly Fiorina Both Repels and Enthralls Liberal Feminists."

That particular feminist is Erin Gloria Ryan, managing editor of Jezebel:

“I am constantly pivoting mentally with her,” Ms. Ryan said, adding that she had not at all been torn about opposing Mrs. Palin or Mrs. Bachmann. Mrs. Fiorina, she said, is “contrary to the conservative female narrative, the way she looks, the way she presents herself, the no-nonsense businesswoman thing.”

Ever think about the ways in which Carly Fiorina is the opposite of Sarah Palin? Palin had the appropriate political position that made her seem like an apt choice for VP. State governor. But then she wasn't ready to talk under the questioning that suddenly got aimed at her when she was chosen and it screwed up the confidence we were too ready to put in her because of her political credential.

Fiorina makes us wonder right from the beginning whether she's appropriate, because she's held no political position, but start aiming those challenging questions at her and she's ready to speak straight to the issues with astounding stamina and conviction that make us want to believe she can do what it takes.

"The proper skirt suit is dead, long live the thought-provoking skirt suit."

From a NYT fashion article titled "At Prada, Reinventing the Power Suit."

Was it when women decided that they should stop trying to dress like their male peers, because power did not preclude femininity, and floral dresses invaded the C-suite (see: Michelle Obama)? Was it when Angela Merkel settled on a brightly colored jacket and black trousers as her uniform of choice, and every other female politician seemed to follow up with her version of the same?... It’s unclear, but these days Carly Fiorina is not the only person who wants to bring it back....

The "thought-provoking" skirt suits at Prada look way too silly to be usable by a woman who wants trust and influence. The thoughts provoked would be along the lines of: You can't be serious.

But I think the skirt suit should come back. How perfectly arrayed for the debate Carly Fiorina looked in that blue suit. That's much better than all those awful trousers older women have been relying on. Not to pick on Hillary, but that pantsuit she wore to her granddaughter's birthday is incomprehensibly bad. (Normally, it shouldn't matter what a woman wears to a 1-year-old's birthday party, but the press was given a view, so I'm judging it as a deliberate political photo op.)

The coldness and the hotness — Hillary Clinton and Carly Fiorina on "Meet the Press."

On "Meet the Press" today (which began with an interview with Hillary). Brooks said:

Sometimes she's campaigning like she's in Napoleon's march on Moscow, just like a trudge through the winter. This was a little more upbeat, a little more fun...

A little more fun than this...



Brooks continues:

She's basically has a defensive posture. And that means she's erecting walls, not trusting people, and there's no romance. People, especially this year, they want a little romance, they want a lot of ideological action going outward. But she's on the defensive. And so that's the core problem. It's not the emails. Nobody's going to disqualify her as president because she used one server versus another. That's not a real scandal. It's her attitude.

Later, asked whether Hillary Clinton is "in tune with the mood of the electorate," Andrea Mitchell says she is not because...

She's not angry enough. She's not-- And it's hard for her to be angry because then you've got, you know, Donald Trump saying, "She's shrill," which is a sexist word, let's face it. But she has to get around that. But the anger, the passion is all on people going on the attack, whether it's, you know, whether it's Donald Trump, whether it's Carly Fiorina, or whether it's Bernie Sanders.

"Shrill," yeah, it is used to push women back, but Carly Fiorina is a woman, and she's not cowed at all. She, too, was interviewed earlier in the show, right after Hillary, and she was fierce, utterly on the attack, especially as Chuck Todd tried to get her to concede that she'd misstated what she thought she saw in that harvest-the-brain Planned Parenthood video. Watch it:



Why won't she concede that the fetus we see is stock footage, intercut to increase the emotional impact of the story that is related by a witness? I say it's a deliberate trap. The video makes us feel we saw the event. One could be wrong, and maybe eventually Carly will say she did look back and sees now that she was conflating the image with the spoken account. But until then, she's creating pressure on everyone to view the video for themselves, and once people do that, most will be horrified by the story and want to know if it's true, and those who want to say but Carly was wrong about seeing the incident in the video will seem morally unbalanced, perhaps monstrous. That's what you want to talk about?!

Presidential candidates on late night talk shows.

I had "Colbert" on the DVR and watched a little of Ted Cruz, then shut it off. Noticed there are clips up showing Fiorina on Jimmy Fallon's show. Watched the one where she sings to her dog. She has 2 Yorkies, and yet when Fallon asked her if her singing was "dorky," she failed to say "It's not dorky, it's Yorkie!" So that annoyed me.