Obama Won because of his Power to cause... Lactation?

You may remember the term "Gorbasm," coined by Rush Limbaugh in the early 1990s. As Rush defines it in his book The Way Things Ought to Be, a Gorbasm is "(A) fake and phony feeling of bliss, euphoria, excitement, ecstacy, and nirvana when pondering all the wonderful things Mikhail Gorbachev has done for the planet." 

Now, given all the fainting and swooning and excitement and ecstasy we all noted from Barack Obama's more obsessive followers, you might be thinking we are in need of a new term for this. We could call it Barack Breast Leakage.  

From Slate: How the president-elect tapped into a powerful—and only recently studied—human emotion called "elevation."

In his forthcoming book, Born To Be Good (which is not a biography of Obama), Keltner writes that he believes when we experience transcendence, it stimulates our vagus nerve, causing "a feeling of spreading, liquid warmth in the chest and a lump in the throat." For the 66 million Americans who voted for Obama, that experience was shared on Election Day, producing a collective case of an emotion that has only recently gotten research attention. It's called "elevation...

We come to elevation, Haidt writes, through observing others—their strength of character, virtue, or "moral beauty." Elevation evokes in us "a desire to become a better person, or to lead a better life." The 58 million McCain voters might say that the virtue and moral beauty displayed by Obama at his rallies was an airy promise of future virtue and moral beauty. And that the soaring feeling his voters had of having made the world a better place consisted of the act of placing their index fingers on a touch screen next to the words Barack Obama. They might be on to something. Haidt's research shows that elevation is good at provoking a desire to make a difference but not so good at motivating real action.

No doubt, if you are immune to Barack Breast Leakage, you may be disgusted at the thought of people reacting like this to the vapid speeches of an unaccomplished politician. The article goes further here, and discusses disgust. I'll leave that to you to look at yourself. 

It's good to note that this "liquid warmth in the chest" is satisfied by the simple act of voting. There is hope that most of these followers will not actually ever try to do anything to cause any dangerous, socialistic change. They just wanted to feel good about themselves. 

Keltner believes certain people are "vagal superstars"—in the lab he has measured people who have high vagus nerve activity. "They respond to stress with calmness and resilience, they build networks, break up conflicts, they're more cooperative, they handle bereavement better." He says being around these people makes other people feel good. "I would guarantee Barack Obama is off the charts. Just bring him to my lab." 

It was while looking through the letters of Thomas Jefferson that Haidt first found a description of elevation. Jefferson wrote of the physical sensation that comes from witnessing goodness in others: It is to "dilate [the] breast and elevate [the] sentiments … and privately covenant to copy the fair example." Haidt took this description as a mandate. Since it's tricky to study the vagus nerve, he and a psychology student conceived of a way to look at it indirectly. The vagus nerve works with oxytocin, the hormone of connection. Since oxytocin is released during breast-feeding, he and the student brought in 42 lactating women and had them watch either an inspiring clip from The Oprah Winfrey Show about a gang member saved from a life of violence by a teacher or an amusing bit from a Jerry Seinfeld routine. 

About half the Oprah-watching mothers either leaked milk into nursing pads or nursed their babies following the viewing; none of the Seinfeld watchers felt enough breast dilation to wet a pad, and fewer than 15 percent of them nursed. You could say elevation is Oprah's opiate of the masses, so it's fitting that she early on gave Obama her imprimatur. And that for his victory speech was up front in Grant Park, elevation's moist embodiment, feeling so at one with humankind that she used a stranger as a handkerchief.

So both Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey have learned to cause a significant portion of their viewers/followers to experience Barack Breast Leakage. I wonder where they learned this ability? Perhaps this is the long-awaited explanation for how they managed to spend so much time in a racist church, seemingly unable to realize that their Reverend was evil incarnate. 

It seems as if Jeremiah Wright's speech must also cause Barack Breast Leakage in his followers. That's the only explanation that makes sense. And Barack and Oprah picked up on it so well, that they too learned to cause it in their followers. 

Makes sense to me. At least as much sense as anything else during this bizarre election cycle has.