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1. Okay, to expand on point I made a bit more. The core error being made by both Dem & GOP leadership is that Trump is an aberration who will soon be gone. That core error leads both parties to give Trump a free pass on stuff that would get pushback from a normal president.
2. If you're a normal pol like Pelosi or Mitch McConnell, your instinct on Trump is "this guy is a freak, a one-off, a mule. He'll be gone soon." For GOP that means you don't restrain Trump but get as much out of him as possible (tax cuts, courts).
3. If Trump is an aberration, a mule who will have no heirs, then you don't have to worry about the precedence he's setting for future presidents. You can safely assume that no one in future, even future Republican presidents, will imitate him.
4. A lot of what Pelosi is doing makes sense if you posit that she believes what Biden says he does: that Trump is an aberration. If he's such, that reduces the urgency of trying to build an impeachment case since his weirdness won't be repeated.
5. And if Trump is an aberration, not only is impeachment less urgent but also you don't need to make the political case (one that might win over some Republicans) for rolling back the imperial presidency. Trump is a bad dream we'll wake up from.
6. If Trump is a transformative figure, a harbinger of a new authoritarianism, it's worth taking risks (building case for impeachment & rolling back presidential power). If he's an aberration, then it's worth just waiting him out for 2 to 6 years.
7. The core issue, which reasonable people can take different sides on, is: how do we respond to Trump? Is he a freak, in which case goal should be to return to pre-Trump status quo? Or is he transformative & requiring a more radical response?
8. It's impossible to overstate the degree to which elite response to Trump has been governed by nostalgia. That's why the McCain funeral, where they got to mourn their common past, was so emotional a moment. It's why Never Trump right gets bolstered in the press.
9. Although this nostalgia politics is very strong in elite, its not confined to elite. Popularity of Biden is from the fact there is a mass politics for people who just want (understandably!) a return to normal. A president who is human, a politics not in crisis mode.
10. This is a good point. Pelosi is absolutely top notch at strategizing during times of normal politics. Which is why tendency to trust her judgment makes sense. But what if normal politics has gone out the window & a different response needed?
