Reclaiming "Normalization"

It’s way past time we start normalizing the kinds of things that will be necessary for American renewal in the post-Trump era.

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Normalization is a dirty word in the pro-democracy movement, because we associate it with the many ways elites and institutions under-reacted to authoritarianism and corrupt conduct when Donald Trump brought them to the center of national politics.

“Normalization” was when cable news networks treated candidate-Trump as an entertaining or colorful figure rather than a dangerous one.

You’re normalizing him. Stop normalizing him.

“Normalization” is when reporters “sanewash” his deranged public utterances, such that casual news consumers are uninformed about how off the rails he is.

You’re normalizing him. Stop normalizing him.

“Normalization” was when people who knew better chose to ride the tiger, rather than work to defeat Trump, because they believed or hoped he’d help them advance some narrow interest, and thus downplayed his broader unfitness for office.

You’re normalizing him. Stop normalizing him.

THIS 👏 IS 👏 NOT 👏 NORMAL

I want to reclaim the term—a slightly different usage, but the same concept—in the hope that Democrats and the anti-Trump resistance can deploy it toward pro-social, pro-democratic ends. Normalization isn’t just a thing tastemakers and influencers do to aberrant people or politics or institutions. It’s not solely the means by which we allow ourselves to be boiled like the proverbial frog. It’s also something people can, for good or ill, do to themselves or their own priorities.

And it’s way past time we start normalizing the kinds of things that will be necessary for American renewal in the post-Trump era.

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We all must know this, at some level, because we watch Trump do it everyday. It’s his go-to method for acclimating the media, and then the broad public, to some outrage before he actually attempts it.

Sometimes he does outrageous things impulsively, out of nowhere, and when he does, it tends to go poorly. When he bulldozes the East Wing of the White House or announces a slush fund for violent insurrectionists. When he suggests injecting bleach.

But he’s intuited or learned that he can get much further along if he desensitizes us first. “We’ll see,” he says, about everything from releasing his tax returns to divesting from his businesses to running for an unconstitutional third term in 2028. He lied about the results of every election he’d run in, such that by November 2020, the impulse across party lines was to let him burn himself out into irrelevance. By the time we do see his true intentions, we’ve turned it over in our heads so much that it’s impossible to muster spontaneous outrage. To everyone who’s upset, it looks like the rest of the population doesn’t care. Even after January 6, a consensus quickly gelled: Trump had discredited himself for all time; we could safely move on.

I don’t know if Trump will attempt to run for president again, but he’s clearly keeping his options open, and we know Republicans want to help him keep his options open, because none of them say “he’s absolutely termed out and the party won’t allow him to be the nominee for a fourth time.” They muse about loopholes in the Constitution. They wear Trump 2028 hats. Trump sells those to his loyalists, and hands them out to all takers. He probably won’t seek a third term. If he doesn’t, all that Trump 2028 merch can be repurposed on behalf of one of his older children. But if he does attempt to run, do we really expect mass protests? Or will we get a few bored headlines and breaking news alerts, then move on while the courts sort it out?

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Democrats could stand to adopt this tactic, but for good things, rather than bad ones.

This occurred to me Sunday, when I saw Hakeem Jeffries proactively adopt the fetal position after Kristen Welker asked him whether democratic socialists belong in the Democratic Party.

Here we see the standard method Democrats apply to all controversies: run away. Disassociate yourself. Hug the winning side of polls. I’m not saying Jeffries should have tried to “normalize” unpopular DSA positions. But notice, Welker didn’t even ask him about them! He volunteered them. In some real sense he abnormalized his own party by accepting the premise that some meaningful segment of caucus holds them, reciting a Republican attack line for the purposes of rebutting it. As political nerds might say, he “increased the salience” of Democrats’ worst issues.

It did not occur to him to “normalize” the idea that checking Trump in aggressive, hard-nosed ways requires a broad, unified front that will sweep in some people with ideas that the party as a whole doesn’t support. That in a party united in support of democracy, equality, and the rule of law, some members will have avant-garde ideas, and that’s fine.

While Democratic leadership is crouching defensively, Trump and his loyalists are trying to “normalize” the idea that private-sector figures who’ve entered corrupt arrangements with him can cite “executive privilege” to shield themselves from congressional oversight. In response to an inquiry from Trump’s private attorney, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued this opinion, declaring that “[A]s a general matter, executive privilege can apply to presidential communications with private advisers so long as the communications (1) relate to official presidential decisionmaking, (2) involve or reflect communications with the President or his direct advisers, and (3) are confidential.”

This is nonsense legally—a facially corrupt and absurd idea. But once shrugged off and ceded to the courts, it will achieve its purpose: making it impossible for Democrats to conduct timely oversight when they control Congress next year. Elon Musk or David Ellison or various Crypto Barons—or maybe all of them—can declare themselves private presidential advisers and behave as though they’re obligated by law to conceal their dealings with Trump, and by the time the Supreme Court affirms that this is incorrect—assuming the Supreme Court affirms that this is incorrect—it’ll be too late. We’ll have moved on.

We desperately need Democrats to normalize the idea that the election will be a referendum on aggressive oversight. Will Democrats take the extraordinary step of using Congress’s inherent contempt power to compel testimony from Trump appointees or “private advisers”? We’ll see! We obviously have that power, but we hope to resolve these matters quickly and cooperatively. On the other hand, if they leave us no other choice… well, the people will speak about whether they demand answers from these witnesses in November.

Will Democrats fund Trump’s government when they control Congress? We hope accommodation can be reached, but it’s unlikely the votes will be there to fund the offices of people covering up the Epstein Files, or flouting subpoenas.

Impeachment? The people are insisting that we hold this lawless president accountable. The Constitution obligates us to.

Think of it as practice, because the real test will come in 2029, when Democrats will face obstacles to restoring democracy, and will be tempted to “look forward, not backward.” We know how Democratic leaders approach dilemmas like this, the way Jeffries did on Meet the Press: Put space between the party and controversy. But some controversial ideas are good. Abolishing the filibuster is a good-but-controversial idea. Expanding the Supreme Court is a good-but-controversial idea. Adding states to the union is a good-but-controversial idea. They all need to be normalized rather than triangulated against.

Are Democrats considering adding seats to the Supreme Court? Well, it’s definitely in our power. We have the absolute right to do it, as Donald Trump might say. Indeed, the founders intended the branches of government to check and balance each other. And this court is out of control. We’ll see what John Roberts says after the 2028 election, and when the oldest Republican justices retire, but we’ll be ready to govern on day one, and won’t be beholden to two sets of rules.