Against Normalism

It doesn’t matter that Trump’s legislative agenda is in trouble. There is bigger game afoot.

Same, girlfriend. (Tom Brenner for the Washington Post via Getty Images)

1. SOTU

There have been two modes of reaction to Trump’s speech last night. The first is from people like Sarah and Sam who worried that it was an effective demagogic attack.

The second is from people like Matt Yglesias, who viewed it as a bumbling cavalcade of lies unlikely to help Trump and Republicans. Here’s Yglesias:

I could keep writing in this vein about lies and how I’m frustrated with lies and lying, but what’s the point? He got huge applause for a promise to balance the federal budget, and he’s also trying pushing for a gigantic multi-trillion dollar tax cut. In the speech, he didn’t just call for TCJA to be made permanent, he reiterated his calls for no tax on tips and no tax on overtime and pushed for a brand new tax cut on interest payments on car loans.

The problem with lying is that it doesn’t actually set you up to govern.

For all the braggadocio, Trump’s legislative agenda is in peril.

I don’t mean to pick on Yglesias. He’s just one example of the Normalist view, which can be abstracted to something like: