By
Ed Kilgore,
political columnist for Intelligencer since 2015
SCOTUS.
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?
