McCain Licks His Lip Eerily Often

This is wicked weird. McCain licked his upper lip 70 times during the debate. Watch in slow-motion.

Colbert was all over this, likening McCain unto a lizard…

Sean Quinn over at 538 has an interesting theory…though we have no idea how much credence to give this hypothesis.

What can we conclude from this? I’m not a trained psychologist, but I have used observation of this particular tell in the past to my financial advantage. Usually when I’m observing two players are in a hand against each other, one decides to make a laydown, and the other tongue juts when that happens, I’ll mentally capture their entire body language during the hand in my memory bank, and when I see it again, I’ll assign greater likelihood that the opponent is bluffing. I’ve profited from this tell.

Does that mean McCain is getting away with something he knows he shouldn’t? Not necessarily — he could be excited to be scoring points — but Navarro’s long FBI experience tells us this unconscious reptile-brain mimic is in that ballpark. Perhaps trained body language experts will see the clips and make more definitive conclusions about what McCain is doing here…

Or he could just have a really hilarious tic and it could mean nothing.