Like most of you reading, I was delighted by the midterm election results. It's about ten years too late, but it looks like America is finally breaking up with this loser.

I've also been pretty happy with how Democrats have reacted to the greatest midterm performance in a half-century. Even though their victory last week was far greater than previous wins during the Trump era (2018, 2020), the victors seem keenly aware that their mandate is fragile.

For instance: despite Trump's flagrant corruption and lawbreaking, few Democrats are talking about impeaching him. Why? Because it's not something independents are interested in. They've seen that movie before and they don't want to see it again.

You might think a landslide election would prompt the winners to indulge in their boldest ideological fantasies, but it might counterintuitively do the opposite. A landslide of this scale discredits the idea that swing voters are extinct and elections are just about mobilizing the base. Sure, an excited base was part of this victory, but Democrats also won in places where there was hardly any base to mobilize. And they won with candidates who said things that wouldn't play well in self-consciously progressive spaces.

Yes, I'm a center-left guy who generally believes America would benefit more from center-left solutions, but above all else I want peace. I don't want civil war. I want America to remain a liberal democracy. This past week was a step in the right direction. Let's keep it going.

Trump will eventually exit the scene, but the cultural division in American society that he exploited will remain. I believe that division is our country's greatest threat. A politics of tolerance is the only way out.

Yes, obviously the conservatives have a ton of work to do on the tolerance front, but us secular liberals also need to improve. To stand a chance politically in much of this country, we simply have to accept that many people will hold beliefs that we deem dumb and backward.

I recall at least two of my daughter's pre-school teachers invoking her zodiac sign to explain some aspect of her personality. My own view is that horoscopes are hogwash, but my response was always a pleasant smile. Not all wrong beliefs have to be corrected.

We all draw a line somewhere, of course. I find male circumcision to be a somewhat ridiculous but tolerable cultural practice. Female genital mutilation, on the other hand, is utterly intolerable. Fortunately, I don't have to convince most people in this country on the latter point.

That we must learn to live among people we disagree with should be obvious in a country as diverse as ours, but in the past 15 years I think both sides of the cultural/political divide have been seduced by the idea that the only way to deal with the other side is to weaken it to the point where it can be ignored. Hence gerrymandering, hence cancel culture. In both instances, of course, the efforts backfired horribly.

Consider the issue of guns. I'm really not a fan of them. I think the approach taken by most other western countries, where gun ownership is far rarer, results in much safer societies. But I also accept that that ship has sailed in the U.S. Gun ownership is deeply ingrained and is never going away. The problem for liberals is that even when they are advancing very sensible gun regulations that enjoy broad public support, they often can't help making clear that they find gun ownership very distasteful.

For instance, eight years ago I wrote about an Austin City Council member kicking up a storm about the police department selling off its old guns to arms dealers.

Council Member Alison Alter doesn’t think it’s right for city guns to make their way back to the private market. On Thursday, Council will vote on a resolution she authored aimed at preventing APD from selling or trading its weapons to others.

“We did not want our Police Department to be contributing guns to the community,” she said during a Tuesday work session, describing her motivation for writing the resolution: “It was contributing to having more guns on the street.”

In another instance, I remember sitting next to a different Council member at an event held by regional commercial realtors association. He was appalled that the group (which was much more Central Texas than Austin) was giving out a pistol as a contest award.

Again, I relate to these people's general aversion to guns and gun culture. But this was America, and specifically, Texas. Guns are just a part of life. There's nothing to be gained by expressing your contempt for them. The best way to pass sensible gun regulations (which generally enjoy broad public support) is by convincing legal gun owners that you're not a threat to their culture and lifestyle.

One thing I've really enjoyed hearing from recently-elected elected officials is the pledge to work just as hard for those who didn't vote for them. Yes, this is something that is implicit in their oath of office, and yet it's remarkable how common it has become to see elected officials openly express contempt for large segments of their own constituents. "Our people hate the right people," J.D. Vance said a few years ago. In another instance he called for mass purges of mid-level government employees and "replacing them with our people."

Vance is nastier-than-average, of course, but his attitude is hardly unusual — among Republicans and Democrats. Many politicians have a pure team mentality. They live in a bubble of donors, activists, lobbyists and strategists. And this is true even of many who mean well and

A member of Congress in a solidly red or blue district is conditioned to completely disregard the 20-40% of their constituents who don't vote for them. Those people, described in numbers on a spreadsheet, are not relevant to your political project. You don't need their support, so why waste time with them?

In his victory speech last week, Iowa Gov-elect Josh Turek promised to be "out and about" the state constantly, and invited anybody who didn't support him to introduce themselves and tell him why he didn't earn their vote.

Scott Collom, the victorious Democrat in Mississippi, said this:

"But I want to have a final word to every Mississippian, the ones that voted for me, the ones that didn't vote for me, and the ones that didn't vote. My commitment to you, each and every one of you, is that first, I'm going to treat your children like I want my children to be treated. I'm going to treat your parents the way I want my parents to be treated. I'm going to treat your future the way I want my future to be."

Again, this should be pretty normal stuff to say in politics, and hopefully it will become more normal.