There are good things to be said for “One Nation After Trump,” a survival guide to our current dilemma by Thomas Mann, Norman Ornstein, and E.J. Dionne. Among them is the authors’ acknowledgement that our recent election was less a spasm of rage than a reaction to the severe and uneven depression that settled in on some parts of the country in the past 30 years, to which politicians of both major parties had paid no attention at all.

Less promising, however, is their belief that Democrats can become the core of a fusionist movement — unlikely in a party moving hard to the Left and imposing a new litmus test in support of late-term abortion. Even more strange is their claim that the Republican Party brought Trump about by shattering norms of behavior, saying the Tea Party abolished civility. The real smashers of norms have always been Democrats, who began their assaults in the late 1980’s, and haven’t stopped smashing them since.