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I think there's a missing possibility in your bullet-point categorization of what a floundering response to a gotcha question might signal: sheer ignorance, rather than cowardice, i.e. the respondent might simply have been parroting a slogan with no actual understanding of why it's held to be true by their ingroup. It's not that they don't believe in the slogan, necessarily, but they've simply memorized it as an article of faith without even stopping to ask why. "Trans women are women" is true because gender studies experts say so and they wouldn't say so without good reason; "the election was stolen" is true because Trump says so and he ought to know. Crucially, good arguments are assumed to exist, it's just that the respondent never bothered to learn them.
Of course, there's nothing necessarily wrong with this. Most people accept both scientific and moral truths ("nothing can travel faster than light", "rape is morally wrong") as claims from authority, without personally seeking to rederive the conclusions. But it's a bad look when a person in a position of authority is shown to have no actual idea what they're talking about. Mouthing along to the Nicene Creed is all that Christiniaty has ever asked of random laypeople, but being unable to articulate a biblical argument for the Trinity would not reflect well on the Pope.
I know what you're getting at, but I don't think it fits the specific example of Clayton. Ossoff didn't ask him his reasoning for why he believed that so-and-so won the 2020 election: he just asked him who he thought won the election.
It may well be the case that Swinson blindly believes in gender ideology, but neglected to take the time out of her busy schedule to memorise the current definition of "woman" set out in Judith Butler's latest missive or whatever. But I'd hazard a guess that her attempt to appease the gender ideologues was only a marriage of convenience.
Agreed, or for that matter a person who aspires to be in a position of authority.
I think Clayton and Swinson might have correctly anticipated that if they give the inflammatory, partisan answer, follow-up questions will be asked. The safest way to avoid backing yourself into a "What makes you so sure?"-shaped corner is to simply not answer the first time. Come to that, I think ignorance can also be in play even with insincere people. I don't know about Clayton in particular, but it's easy to imagine someone who, regardless of their own beliefs, would more confidently answer "Trump" if they've memorized a suitable Gish gallop of alleged voter-fraud evidence that they can rattle off upon request, than if the only answer they could give to "why do you believe that?" was just "because Trump told me to". Thus, the embarrassment can result from an awareness of one's personal inability to defend the claim, not necessarily self-consciousness about the innate ludicrousness of the claim.
(Also, re: the specific "woman" scenario, a crucial detail IMO is that the slogan everybody learned by heart was "trans women are women", not "the word woman means XYZ". "What does the word 'woman' mean in you head, anyway?" is itself the awkward follow-up question: "when you chant trans women are women, what do you mean by that word?".)
This is a very good point. Yet another interpretation of Swinson's response might be that she realised on the spot, not only that she didn't know what the trans-inclusive definition of "woman" was, but that there is no such definition which is coherent and non-circular.
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