Better in their words…

The protesters’ words and actions don’t need my interpretation.
===================
By WILLIAM MCGURN
WSJ  Updated Feb. 6, 2017 7:21 p.m. ET

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. “They prefer rock stars and celebrities to bus drivers and food service workers. They like cute sayings and clever picket signs, not long and patient listening sessions with people who have complicated interests, people who might not pass the liberal litmus test.”

Certainly it’s possible Mr. Trump will end up alienating people who would otherwise work with him but are weary of cracks such as the one implying a moral equivalence between America and Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Yet the American people are not hearing Mr. Trump in a vacuum. They are hearing him in the context of what is coming from the mouths of his critics, the extravagance of which risks overwhelming anything preposterous Mr. Trump might say himself.

One example: Have any of those outraged by Mr. Trump’s tweet disparaging a “so-called judge” paid the least attention to the glaring emptiness of legal reasoning behind the judge’s stay? Ditto for Sally Yates: Anyone else spot the irony in praising a Justice Department appointee for standing up to fascism with an unconstitutional challenge to executive authority?

These are only the mildest forms. At the Women’s March on Washington, Americans heard Madonna fantasize about bombing the White House. On Twitter, they read a then-Politico journalist use a four-letter obscenity to suggest an incestuous relationship between the president and his daughter. Last week American TV screens were filled with images of the champions of tolerance setting fires and smashing windows at Berkeley to stop a gay conservative from addressing College Republicans. On, Wisconsin!

Now Mr. Trump’s progressive opponents seem determined to eat their own. Recently they protested outside Mr. Schumer’s Brooklyn home, under the banner of that same four-letter obscenity, which is highly popular among those who regard Mr. Trump as the triumph of the vulgar.

In New York, where Hillary Clinton won nearly 80% of the citywide vote, this kind of protest may be a crowd pleaser. So is a strategy that calls for boycotting presidential inaugurations, not showing up for Senate committee votes or voting “no” on every Trump cabinet pick. But in, say, North Dakota—a state Mr. Trump carried by 36 points and where Sen. Heidi Heitkamp is up for re-election in 2018—folks might see things differently.

Again, it’s entirely possible President Trump has unleashed furies that will do him in or at least prevent him from doing his job. But the Wisconsin outcome remains equally possible. Which two years from now would leave Mr. Schumer leading an even more shrunken Democratic Party, especially if President Trump manages to get the economy growing again.

If the Wisconsin outcome happens, it won’t be the pro-Trumpers who normalized him. It will be the enemies who shunned democratic politics in favor of celebrity preening, F-bombs and protests designed to intimidate.

Write to McGurn@wsj.com.