There’s No Better Balm Than Success For People
The correct policies, applied in big changes, would appeal to both right and left enough to soften the divisiveness and at least approach a little healing.
Part of what is infuriating about the ineffectiveness of leadership over decades is that a lot of what people would want appeals to both sides. There are aspects we just flat have in common, and others enough of us could find reasonable to make a workable system.
Where Can Democrats and Republicans Find Common Ground?
Economics is the top item. A system that makes work more rewarding. Policies to do with unions, tax relief on the low end, employee leverage, economic structures that help people, like health care that can be carried to a new job. Not things that would make it unprofitable for investors or would laden companies beyond what allows them to do research or grow, but a mix that leads to work being more rewarding. More rewarding for rural people, for city dwellers, for tech workers. There would seem to be a mix that we could agree on, or tolerate, that would move that direction.
Immigration is high in priority with conservatives but there are variations which could appeal enough across many voters. A border that is as closed as can reasonably be while acknowledging it can only go so far. Choosing where and how walls and such are done that avoids serious environmental harm. Then dealing with people in humane ways. Humane treatment of those apprehended coming across. Generous willingness to help those truly in need of asylum. And of those already here, deport only the ones who are truly problems. Others who have a pattern of being constructive members, find ways for them to have some legal status. There are mixes of those policies enough of us, not all but enough of us, could agree on or accept. We even came close twice. Once hammered out by George W. Bush, John McCain and Ted Kennedy in 2007, and again in 2024.
On taxes, you could probably find plenty of conservative voters who think the relentless series of cuts that have gone to the top, they could have done without. Let those reverse or expire and it would be a good step in slowing our deficit spending problem.
On the environment, while there are big differences in how Democrats and Republicans poll on related questions, still a significant, even majority portion of Republicans have long expressed concern about it. Pew Research Center polling shows Republican support for environmental protection and specific measures to address climate change. They may be less likely than Democrats to view it as an urgent crisis, but many acknowledge its causes and consequences, believe more should be done, and support practical policies aimed at addressing it. Younger Republicans are particularly receptive to climate action.
Responses from Republicans in two Pew surveys indicated the following:
- 51% say big businesses are doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change.
- 52% say protecting the environment for future generations is very important.
- 54% say they feel sad about what is happening to the Earth.
- 54% support U.S. participation in international efforts to address climate change — rising to 68% among younger Republicans.
- 53% say climate change is having at least some impact on their local community.
- 55% say human activity contributes some or a great deal to climate change.
- 61% expect they will have to make at least minor changes in their own lives to adapt to climate change.
- 69% favor tax credits for businesses developing carbon-capture technology.
- 75% favor tax credits for Americans who make their homes more energy efficient.
- 86% favor planting about a trillion trees to absorb carbon emissions.
There’s a real partisan divide but these numbers do give a snapshot of how Republican attitudes on these issues as more complex than the political debate makes them appear. You can see the details at Pew survey from 2024 and Pew survey from 2026.
Climate change is hard to dismiss when it’s making life hard in practical ways for all of us. When it’s making our hurricanes worse, our heat waves worse, our wildfires worse, our home insurance worse, our crop growing problems worse, the work of our ranchers and farmers worse. Would conservative voters really object to leadership that simply acknowledged it’s real, that took some steps toward mitigation, that showed some interest in planning a future that incorporates that reality? While Trump and all have cut back on alternative energy progress and made electric cars less popular than they were becoming, is that something their voters were clamoring for before this? Or is it just an us-vs-them issue stirred up unnecessarily? Would conservative voters really rebel against some efforts to continue progress toward an eventual renewable future?
Imagine a split government, one party has Congress and the other the presidency, where they both stood their ground but acted sanely, and found items like the above and made, not just a little effort in those directions, but big, “Wow, this is happening!” changes. Leadership that was busy doing that and didn’t have as much time or focus to be badgering us with ways to hate one another.
On other issues we would still vehemently disagree with one another, and the divisiveness would hardly be gone, but there would be a big softening. Both because people would be hurting less, be less frustrated, and because we could see us working with others on at least some things toward better end results. Tolerable, and better, end results, and maybe more to come after that.
I would say that leadership on the right has been much more focused on whipping up their followers to hate the other side. I would say that leadership on the left has failed miserably at doing their part toward making such big changes a reality, or even inspiring a movement focused on that. Not to portray it as a false equivalence but both sides have their flaws.
We cannot become as one, as if all is well, but if we had real leaders who simply made big change on bread and butter issues, issues basic to people on things they want, that would go far toward changing direction. Changing from ever worsening and ridiculous degrees of divisiveness. It’s doubly frustrating to see it not happening, in part for the good changes people could have, but also because it is the best way to undercut the march toward a civil-, what? Not a civil war but a civil disintegration.
Being doubly frustrating it is also a double opportunity. On the Democratic leadership side, bold change, and inspiring a movement for that, that is the ticket. Let’s see it.
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