Who’s ‘Normalizing’ Donald Trump Now?

By William McGurn,

The vulgarity and violence of the anti-Trump left may be helping the president.

Quick: What do “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” US Weekly and former President Barack Obama have in common?

All have been accused of the high crime of “normalizing” Donald Trump. The idea is that anyone not relentlessly emoting against the 45th president is helping him build the new Reich. As with so much of the Sturm und Drang surrounding Mr. Trump, the point here is not to advance an anti-Trump argument but to preclude argument altogether.

After all, does one argue with Hitler?

The crazy is not entirely mad. In 2009, activists note, Republicans found themselves in a similar fix, with Mr. Obama ensconced in the Oval Office and lopsided Democratic majorities running Congress. By crashing Mr. Trump’s administration, the activists hope to excite their base and revive their party the way Republicans did.

Perhaps. But there’s a good argument that the Democrats are getting played. This was, in fact, the headline over a recent New York Daily News piece by Mike Gecan, co-director of the Industrial Areas Foundation—the same IAF that was co-founded by Saul Alinsky and helped inspire a young community organizer named Barack Obama.

Mr. Gecan argues that the parallel for what’s happening in Washington right now is Wisconsin in 2011. Back then, Gov. Scott Walker backed a bill stripping public-employee unions of collective-bargaining rights. The left erupted in protest, with demonstrators occupying the State Capitol and a movement pushing a recall of the governor in what became a national drama.

Just one problem: It didn’t work. The bill was passed and ruled constitutional. Gov. Walker won the 2012 recall election in June even as Mr. Obama carried Wisconsin in the presidential in November. And Republicans increased their majorities in the Wisconsin state House and Senate.

Mr. Gecan says protest is no substitute for hard, grass-roots persuasion. “Many Dems either don’t know how to relate to people with moderate or mixed views or they don’t want to,” he writes.

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