Lexington The backfire effect

摘要

IF DEMOCRATIC strategists could build a candidate for Pennsylvania's sixth congressional district, she would probably look something like Chrissy Houlahan. A 50-year-old former air-force captain, entrepreneur and chemistry teacher with Teach for America, Mrs Houlahan appears, crucially, to have been none of those impressive things for political effect. Until recently she had not contemplated running for anything. And if she had, she says, speaking on the fringe of a small gathering of voters in Valley Forge, a wealthy suburb northwest of Philadelphia, she would have considered herself unsuitable: "I'm a very private person and have never asked anything from anyone before." The Damascene moment that brought her, and hundreds of Democratic women candidates like her, on to the campaign trail was Donald Trump's election. "I was raised to respect democracy," she says. "But I felt on this occasion the people had got it wrong."