Let yourself have this. For one day, let it sink in.

The House is blue. The Senate is blue. Texas, where Democrats had not won a statewide race since 1994, flipped, and James Talarico beat Ken Paxton to do it. South Carolina flipped, and Lindsey Graham’s seat went with it. The wave came in from every direction, and it was bigger than the pundits dared to say out loud.

And look at who it carried. It was a very good night for America’s minorities, the real kind, the kind whose firsts are still being counted.

New Mexico elected the first Native American governor in the nation’s history, Deb Haaland. The people who were here first now hold the highest office in the state that sits on their ancestral land.

Georgia elected the first Black woman to serve as governor anywhere in this country, Keisha Lance Bottoms.

Florida elected its first Black governor, Byron Donalds. Yes, he’s a MAGA Republican, and yes, I know. It is still a barrier broken, and I’m not too proud to say so.

Counting Wes Moore in Maryland, that makes four Black governors in a country that had elected only three in 250 years.]

That is what a country looks like when it remembers what it should be.

And because a good country looks after its minorities, let us take a moment for the newest one. As of tonight, the Republican Party in Washington is a minority party. They are going to need compassion, help and opportunity. Luckily, we have plenty of people to provide it.

The new minority’s most prominent member weighed in before the night was over.

Late on election night, the president took a call from CBS News, and what came out of it was not what anyone expected. Donald Trump congratulated the Democrats (!) and said he looks forward to working with them “for the good of our country.” He told the reporter he congratulated Talarico and that Talarico ran a good race. The CBS correspondent on the call called his tone unusually conciliatory and resigned.

I will take it. A man who has spent a decade teaching Americans to see their neighbors as enemies spent one night sounding like a citizen of a republic. But I am also reading the rest of what he said. In the same call he reminded the new majority that he holds the veto pen, and suggested they would want to work with him because otherwise he would simply veto everything. Before the night was out he was back on social media blaming Fox News for the losses. An olive branch with a veto attached is a negotiating position, not a change of heart. Welcome the gesture, and keep your hand on your wallet.

Enjoy this rebuke of what our country has become. Hug whoever is closest. You earned this relief.

Now put the champagne down.

A word to the newly elected: You are not here because we adore you.

You are here because millions of exhausted, frightened, decent people wanted the adults back in the room. They want sanity, level-headedness and fairness, and that is the whole job description.

Do not forget who sent you or what for. The moment a victory starts to feel like a personal mandate, we are back where we started. A majority is judged by how it treats the people who did not vote for it, and the whole country will be watching.

Understand what you were not given. Nobody sent you to Washington to answer cruelty with cruelty. Nobody sent you to forgive and forget, either, or to restore the comfortable, donor-friendly centrism that left the door open for all this in the first place.

The voters want the law enforced and the corruption stopped.

They want trials held and verdicts that mean something. That standard has to bind your friends as tightly as it binds your enemies.

This is not weakness we elected. It is order, justice and a little decency, and it is easy to waste.

There is real work to do. The new minority will need something to do besides sulk, and so will you. Here is the agenda.

Iran has to be over. No more drift, no more brinkmanship, no more young Americans paying for decisions made in rooms they will never enter. End it, and do it honestly.

The Epstein files have to see daylight. That dark cloud has hung over the country long enough. For the thousandth time: whoever is culpable for the heinous crimes in those files must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. It does not matter how rich they are, how powerful they are, or which party they have donated to.

The politics of “otherness” has to be whittled away. Trump built an empire on teaching Americans to look at their neighbors and see enemies. We are more than red or blue. That includes the newly outnumbered. They are not our enemies. They are our neighbors who lost an election. We are a country that keeps getting bigger than the men who try to make it smaller.

Every serious society has programs for those who find themselves in a new and difficult position. Here is ours. It has three parts.

Compassion comes first. Be kind. This is a hard transition. For some of them it is the first time in years that the subpoena has their name on it and the gavel is in someone else’s hand. Bring a casserole or something. And no gloating. We said we were done.

Help comes next. Offer orientation. The rights of the minority are real: to be heard, to offer amendments, to demand a fair process. They will be pleased to learn that those rights exist. We have been pleased about them before. And for anyone who needs it translated, “regular order” is about to sound extremely appealing.

Then comes opportunity. Being a minority is not a life sentence. It is a chance to figure out what you are for. A republic needs a loyal opposition the way a ship needs a keel, and the minority that earns its way back will do it with ideas and candidates, not veto threats. Offer them a seat at the table, a fair hearing and a copy of the rules. Then hold them to the same standard we are holding ourselves.

Do not expect the upcoming mornings to feel different. When you wake up, the grocery bill will be the same. The corruption will not have vanished overnight. Even in January, when the new Congress is sworn in, the damage of the last few years will still be sitting on the table, and some of it will get worse before it gets better. Prices and corruption do not fix themselves on a swearing-in schedule.

That is not failure. It does not mean we were fooled, and it does not mean nothing ever changes. This election is the first step, and the most necessary one, in a long fight. A step is all it is. The people who give up when the morning looks the same are exactly who the other side is counting on.

So celebrate this. Then keep showing up. Vote in the next election. Call your representative. Hold the people you just elected to what they promised.

Is this the start of the end of our national nightmare?

Only if we wake up, and stay that way.