Lots of well-meaning folks in and beyond both major political parties have quietly hoped that the poisonous atmosphere of partisan polarization in Washington and around the country will dissipate once Donald Trump has left the White House. He is, everyone agrees, sui generis as an incredibly divisive figure, adored as a near-deity in his own party and its dominant MAGA movement and despised to the point of distraction by Democrats and (increasingly) independents. When the 47th president finally, inevitably, leaves office, can Democrats and Republicans perhaps return to more civil forms of disagreement? Might they even occasionally work together across the partisan barricades?

Even before Trump’s second, savagely partisan stint in the White House, hopes for a post-Trump return to normalcy were likely naïve. While Trump has certainly added a distinctively vicious, low-brow, and relentlessly mendacious tone to partisan conflict, it’s not like the politics of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama presidencies were beanbag. Even today there are progressives who get angry at the idea Trump is much worse than W. (whose wars killed a lot more people than Trump’s, so far), and MAGA folk and their leader cannot stop talking about and demonizing Obama. Partisan and ideological polarization has been a hallmark of 21st-century American politics generally and won’t go away simply because the all-time champion of divisive politics goes away.

In addition, Trump has two-and-a-half years to put his indelible stamp on a party that has already become his wholly owned property. The GOP is not going to transcend MAGA overnight, if ever, and that means the opposition cannot stand down from........

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