Whether you’re celebrating this week's midterm elections or sniffling into your morning coffee, I have some good news.And no, it has nothing to do with which party won.For years, we’ve been told that America is hopelessly divided.That our politics are tribal.
That our opinions are fixed, our loyalties inherited, and our minds about as open as a bank on Christmas.AMERICA SAW THE BLUE WAVE COMING — BUT DRASTICALLY UNDERESTIMATED THE EXTENT OF THE DEM TSUNAMIDemocrats vote for Democrats.Republicans vote for Republicans.
Independents insist they’re independent while somehow managing to vote for the same party every November.Persuasion? Forget it.Why bother making an argument when everyone has already made up their mind?LEE CARTER: THE SUMMER POLLS MISSED THE POINT: VOTERS ARE MOVING — AND THE MIDTERMS BEGINWell, guess what?They haven’t.And that may be the most encouraging thing to come out of this election.I’m a researcher and strategist.I spend my life studying what people believe, why they believe it, and what, if anything, might change their minds.
I even wrote a book called" Persuasion," which lately has been beginning to sound like a work of historical fiction.JASON CHAFFETZ: FIVE TIMELESS POLITICAL LESSONS THAT GOT LOST IN 2026But I’ll admit something.Watching our politics harden over the past decade, even I began to wonder just how persuadable America really was.We seemed to have reached a point where facts were filtered through party affiliation, arguments were judged by who made them, and changing your mind was treated less like intellectual growth and more like treason.In the 2026 midterm elections, voters just did something wonderfully inconvenient.
They reminded us that they are human beings, not permanent members of political teams.We’ve stopped debating and started diagnosing.Anyone who disagrees with us must be stupid, evil, brainwashed, or watching the wrong cable news channel.Then voters did something wonderfully inconvenient.They...