American politics didn’t look healthy going into the midterm elections. It’s essential for democratic stability that each election result in turning the page from the last one, and the nation did not have that.

Trust in in the integrity of our election system was the lowest in modern history. A significant portion of the electorate still hadn’t accepted the result of the 2020 presidential election, including the still influential former president who had lost. Several candidates who had fanned the flames of political misinformation prevailed in the Republican primaries and threatened to prevail in November.

At the time, the rhetoric of crisis and division deepened as the general election approached, from the president’s side as well as the former president’s. Commentators speculated — reasonably — that Republican voters and candidates weren’t going to accept the results of the election. Many declared that democracy itself was on the line.

Many influential and not so influential voices declared that their political opponents were out to destroy democracy, freedom, rights, and America itself, each group defining those terms in its own way. The temperature was rising and the pressure was building.

And then — everything settled down. Mostly.

The repudiation of candidates who continued to question the results of the last presidential election is accelerating the process of settling down. The only major candidate to seriously challenge his or her defeat has been Kari Lake in Arizona. In Pennsylvania, the worst that supporters of state Sen. Doug Mastriano have been able to muster is a series of nuisance recount requests in counties around the state. These requests are a waste of taxpayer resources, but they aren’t a serious threat to democratic integrity and voter confidence.

The divisive rhetoric that defined the election season has calmed. This happens during the holiday season every two years, but it felt particularly important this year, when it seemed that the election might not release the building pressure. But it did, and life returned mostly to normal. That’s how the system is supposed to work.

Going into 2023 and the coming presidential elections, candidates and their political allies, commentators, and everyday citizens must keep the temperature down, and the pressure low. The language of crisis and division and imminent threats to the American way of life has only served to raise the stakes of politics to an unsustainable level — it’s the kind of rhetoric that makes a real crisis more likely by speaking it into being.

Historians may someday regard 2022 as the year the temperature finally began to come back down in American politics. But that will depend on many people — from political pros to average Joes — lowering their own temperature. They need to refuse to say the harshest thing about their political opponents to gain supporters and votes. They need to accept the results when they lose. Recovery requires Americans to trust the system and listen to each other’s concerns and interests, and find the common ground the electoral system is designed to find.

First Published: December 31, 2022, 11:00 a.m.