https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/07/04/democrats-majority-rules-norms-trump-2020-218947
…a strategy of Democratic norm-breaking is justifiable only if it can be reasonably expected to result in a lasting political realignment—to break the cycle rather than escalate it. It must so thoroughly disempower the other side that it forestalls serious reprisals. Put simply, the strategy that Faris and others on the left are proposing had better work—because the tit-for-tat conflict that would result from a halfhearted or incomplete attempt would be even worse than the status quo.
Faris himself grasps this point. The goal, he writes, “is to control the levels of power long enough to permanently alter the political trajectory of the country.” But stating the goal is not enough. The question Democrats should be asking is not, “Is American democracy in an emergency?” The right question is, “Do the risks of staying put in this emergency exceed the risks of trying to end it, and failing?”
Along with that assessment of risk must come some humility about past Democratic attempts to tame the far right, such as President Obama’s incorrect prediction that his reelection would “break this fever,” or the assurances that an “emerging Democratic majority” would force Republicans to come to terms with a demographically changing America. If Democrats are resolved to fight dirty, they should be studying cases of successful and failed realignments, fleshing out the ideological framework to explain themselves, and building the internal consensus it will take to follow through. They should be assessing their leaders with the goal of realignment in mind, rejecting those whose mental models still have a place for concepts like “meaningful bipartisanship.”
Realignments are nothing short of revolutionary events. Democrats should begin a norm-breaking program only if they are willing to complete it. And they can complete it only if they are willing to tune out the very civil, very serious, and very wrong voices that will demand half-measures at every step.
The best way to build that willingness is by referring the specifics of the Normal Is Over program back to a couple of broad, animating questions. First, when evaluating a part of the program, Democrats should ask, “Does it weaken a structural barrier to democracy?” Second, “Does it make it easier to enact policy that expands the governing coalition?” Obamacare, for instance, not only expanded access to health insurance, but also encouraged more Americans to become politically active to protect that access. Faris’ proposals generally pass these tests.
