With Donald Trump in the White House, it seems like an odd time for a debate about civility on the left to break out. But after three administration officials were confronted at restaurants in separate incidents last week, calls for civility have flourished. Those advocating a more polite politics argue that civility should be the left’s m.o. not only because it’s morally desirable, but because it’s politically effective — and “incivility” is not. 

On Twitter, that bastion of civil discourse, former White House advisor David Axelrod, arguedthat the left, by cheering press secretary Sarah Sanders’s ouster from a Virginia restaurant, was playing into Trump’s hands. He wrote that he was “amazed and appalled” to see the left embrace this form of protest. 

And Conor Friedersdorf of the Atlantic tweeted that he was “happy to entertain” the idea that such actions might be politically productive, but he perceived mostly ineffectual self-congratulation.