When/How will the Trump presidency be "normalized"

Great Debates
1

The Trump presidency, (and the months leading up to it) have been filled with controversy, and near non-stop protest, with everything from lying about crowd sizes, muzzling the EPA, all out war against the media, failure of compliace with judges orders, firing of the Attorney general, etc. This has resulted in nonstop outrage and protest from the media and those on the left. But this is still just the first 11 days, of a 4 year term. I can’t imagine that this level of continuous outrage can be maintained for 4 straight years, at some point people have to get back to their lives. I am curious how Dopers think this will happen. As I see it there are 7 possible scenarios.

  1. This is all just part of the transition. After the first moth or so Trump will have done most of the controversial things on his agenda and things will settle down.

  2. The backlash will be significant enough that Trump will realize that he doesn’t actually have a huge popular mandate and so will lower his ambitions to a more modest set of goals.

  3. Congress and the civil service will step in an hamstring the president, so that while he may continue to make broad claims very little will actually become a reality.

  4. The controversial actions, scandals and outrage will continue to increase until Trump is forced out of office early either by resigning when he realizes that being POTUS wasn’t as fun as he thought it would be or when the Republican Congress decides to cut their losses Impeach him and go with Pence.

  5. The controversial actions, and scandals continue, but the American people become inured to it, so that when its revealed that Trump personally called on the IRS to audit entire editorial board of the New York Times, it doesn’t raise an eyebrow.

  6. I’m totally wrong and we really can keep the outrage alive for 4 years.

  7. (For Starving Artist and the rest of the loyal opposition) All the controversial actions that Trump takes end up being great for America and so the outrage spontaneously vanishes as Trumps approval ratings skyrocket into the high 70’s.
    I am hoping that (1) is correct (or better yet (4)), but I am concerned that (5) is what actually happens. I am deeply concerned that the Trump opponents are peaking too early, and that by the time 2018 or 2020 comes around Americans will be so beaten down and so sick of politics that The Republicans will win seats and Trump will win a second term.

What say all of you?

2

I think 5) too. Either the frog will boil, or the current level of outrage simply peters out, exhausted.

Also, because of a very lopsided map, 2018 is likely to either be a GOP Senate victory, or draw. That outcome could make the Trump camp feel vindicated, and deflate Trump opponents.

3

No nuclear option?

4

It will not. As long as he does not spend trillions on waste (wall?), Republicans will stay with him. It will be exactly like this week for 2-4 years.

Trump has nowhere to go. He has 80% backing among Republicans and his backing among independents will erode quickly. To function at all as president, for as long as that goes (2 years?), he has to stay with his America first foreigners are all to blame for all ills policy for at least the four years. That way he can stay at 40% approval and not sink lower. Any give to liberals will be seen as weakness and he will sink to 20% approval and will have to resign as nobody wants him then. There is absolutely no way he can move toward the middle.

He will then keep pushing his agenda and congress will approve some of it. Import taxes, probably not.

5

At Poto:

But will Liberals manage to maintain the “Oh my god, how can he possibly do that, this must not stand!” for four years, or will they eventually accept the dismantling of our Democracy as the new normal?

6

No, they won’t.

If the Republicans could give Obama nothing but grief for EIGHT YEARS when he did nothing even remotely like Trump had done in his first week, no…the Dems won’t give in.

7

Alas, although it is early days, we’re firmly on track for the combination of 5 and 6, so far. That is, sure Trump opponents will keep up the outrage for 8 years and more (like Obama and Bill Clinton opponents did) but it will matter little. (At least, I’m not seeing it yet. Hope I’m wrong.)

Consider President Nixon. Opposed by many, there were large protests thoughout his first term, only leading to his reelection in the biggest landslide in American history. (He also had counter protests.)

Or look at more recent history. The Tea Party movement started in protest of Obama, encouraging more-radical right wing candidates to run and supporters to vote for them, to great success. Later came the Occupy movement, which also stirred up the opposition to vote more right wing! I’m not aware of any more-radical left wingers running or getting elected thanks to Occupy. You simply don’t win against the right wing in America. Not like this. (Call it Silent Majority / Dirty Hippie syndrome.)

So far, Trump is doing fantastically. His supporters are practically dancing in the street praising his actions, deepening and cementing his popularity. Setting up for a Nixonian re-election. His opponents are suitably horrified (shocked, outraged, appalled, scared, sick) at his actions but they are the people who were already horrified by his election, to little effect.

Sure they will manage for eight years. Like Obama’s opponents did. But history suggests they will be ineffective. More likely counter-productive. They have been quite powerless to push back against Trump so far. Just like back in the day they were ineffective at preventing Nixon (or Bush!!) from getting a second term.

Remember, Bush “kept us safe”! There were no terrorist attacks in America during Bush’s term! Some alternative facts!

Not looking good. I hope there will be effective Trump opposition yet.

There must be pushback against Trump at some point. What will it look like? What will be Trump’s first failure?

8

This is the future. Manufactured outrage can last forever. The Democrats will not stop whining about everything Trump does, doesn’t, didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t do.

SSDD, after day, after day, after day (cue Groundhog’s Day I Got You Babe by Sonny & Cher).

The only way to break the stalemate is to elect a lot more U.S. Senators, and U.S. Congressmen, from one party, or the other. 67 U.S. Senators, and 290 U.S. Congressmen sounds about right.

9

But by behaving “very badly” at first, Trump is setting himself up for future good perception. If he only behaves “moderately badly” from now on, he’ll be seen as good in contrast with earlier bad, like how teachers give the bad kid credit for behaving OK, because the OK behavior is perceived as “good” behavior.

10

Ummm… no. Not in his case.

11

Don’t even think about it.

12

Don’t you mean all out war BY the media? Against Trump, that is.

13

I believe that they are seriously slapping each other around.

14

The news media outlets have seriously eroded their own credibility by not including the Who, What, Why, When, and Where in every news story they “produce” for the public’s consumption.

15

Bumping an old zombie thread of mine because I had a moment of clarity today how totally a completely the Trump presidency has been normalized. I stepped back in imagined how a 2017 me would react to the news of the day.

Trump sent out a Mother’s day greeting attacking the mothers of his political opponents and my response wasn’t “Oh my god he just cost himself the election!” it was “of course he did”. We have a member of Congress who lied about every bit of his background, and is now under iindicted by the FBI for 13 counts of fraud and find it very unlikely that he will either resign or be forced out by his party. That Congress meanwhile is debating whether or not it would be prudent to crash the economy just to make a political point. The former president after losing an election launched an attack on the Congress, stole top secret documents and is under investigation for trying to strong arm a governor to change his states election in his favor, and he is the obvious front runner to be elected.

When I wrote the OP I used the example of Trump personally calling the IRS to audit the entire New York Times editorial board, as an over the top example of something that would be impossible to let slide. But now my response would be, “yeah, of course he did.”

16

Buck I admire your thoughts here. I used to think uhmm ‘I’m sure [any former presidents] can be kind and maybe encourage people to do something generous each day.’ Maybe I’d think ‘anyone makes mistakes and maybe regrets it and they can grow as human beings.’ None of my chirpy ‘maybes’ would ever be part of that former president’s motivation at all.

17

Yeah, The damage from the election of Trump was permanent and catastrophic. There is no unringing that bell.

18

It’s bad enough that I believe that a lot of people assume that Trump and his ilk will experience no negative consequences for things that would have torpedoed careers ten years ago. I certainly don’t think that any of them will experience consequences and I believe that the US is now permanently damaged.

19

In 2016, I was discussing the presidential campaign with some of our summer interns. For most of them, this was maybe the second presidential election they had paid any real attention to and the first one most of them would be eligible to vote in. I would frequently say, “This isn’t a normal election. We’ve never had a viable candidate behave like this.”

It took me until 2018 to realize that what was normal had changed. And while I was a bit surprised in 2016, looking back it does make sense. Cooperation between the GOP and the Democrats has steadily eroded over the years as the GOP continued to villify Democrats and refuse to compromise on an issue. Can you imagine the likes of Greene, Boebert, or Santos getting elected in 2012? Even if elected, the GOP would have turned on them rather quickly I think.

The other day it occurred to me that I hadn’t heard anything about Ann Coulter in a number of years. Around 2005 or 2006, several papers dropped her columns because even conservatrives didn’t care for her because she was too mean. i.e. She was kind of seen as an extremist and mean back then, but today she’d fit right into mainstream GOP discussions. I can only assume she’s happier being out of the limelight.

20

Yes, yes I can,