It’s easy, for anyone thinking these days, to start wondering about what is happening in America. On the surface, we seem more divided than ever. After years of decline, violent crime is on the rise. There’s a real-enough conversation going on about whether or not our democracy will survive its current set of turmoil. Our media environment is more fragmented than ever, as anyone like me who has run on treadmills at the health club with Fox News and MSNBC playing side-by-side can attest.
Everyone seems like they are talking past each other, and assuming that yelling louder will be a great way to get their point across.
Social media is a disaster. It’s like Facebook and Twitter need empathy buttons, but even if they had them no one would use them. And their business models depend on more eyeballs and more ads, which depend on more and more polarization and division.
This state-of-affairs got me starting to wonder about whether or not Americans agree on anything. Or have we lost all sense of community and common ground?
Being a data-driven type, I decided to do some research. What I found makes me more hopeful about us in America, although not necessarily our democratic institutions.
Big Problems (That We Agree On)
Climate Change
Let’s start with the environment and climate change, an issue that is top-of-mind for nearly all young people – and should be top-of-mind for the rest of us. In a poll conducted by the University of Chicago in 2020, 93% of Americans agree that” we have a right to Clean Air and Water.” (1) The majority of Republicans and Democrats support a) reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2% a year, b) adopting tax incentives for clean energy, and c) having higher fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks. (2)
In a poll taken by Axios in 2021, both Republicans and Democrats rated addressing climate change on one of their Top Five Issues personally, (3)
This seems like an acknowledgement of the importance of climate change as a problem, irrespective of what your favorite Republican senator might say on any day of the week.
Education
92% of Americans believe that we should have a “right to a quality education.” (4) in a 2019 Pew Research survey, Education ranked 3rd of 18 issues as a public policy priority.
Most Republicans and Democrats agree that Pre-K should be available to all 4-year-olds. 63% of adults believe that tuition at public universities should be free. (5)
Making education of higher quality and more affordable is important to all Americans, even if we disagree on exactly how to accomplish those goals.
Community Safety
Also, in the Axios poll taken in 2021, both Republicans and Democrats ranked Safety in Communities and Criminal Justice Reform as a Top Fifteen policy issue. Everyone wants their neighborhood to be safe.
Gun Control
A few years ago, a student in a university class I was teaching told me that, “where I come from, the only issue that matters to people is the 2nd Amendment.” He was from a rural community in Ohio.
Four in ten Americans reside in a household with a gun. At the same time, 53% of Americans favor stricter gun laws- and support for gun control is higher among gun-owners than non-gun-owners. 81% of Americans support laws that require background checks for purchases at gun shows; this issue has 92% support from Democrats and 70% support from Republicans.
About half of Americans see gun violence as a “very big problem.”
Healthcare
89% of Americans say that everyone should have “a right to affordable healthcare,” which, of course, requires health insurance. (6) Support for the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, has gotten much higher since Obama himself left office.
According to Business Insider in a 2017 survey, 85% of Americans support paid medical leave and 67% support paid leave to care for a sick family member.
Can the Center Hold?
Back in 2012, after Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney in an election than many thought he would lose, the political journalist Jonathan Alter wrote a book about that campaign titled The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies.
Alter begins his book with a poem from William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming, written in 1919:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Alter was worried that the center would not hold in 2012. He wrote, prophetically, about the potential backlash from the Obama presidency: “All presidents face intense opposition, but Obama’s race and ‘otherness’—not to mention his longstanding determination to ‘change the trajectory of American politics’—put him in a different category. He embodies a demographic future that frightens people on the other side.”
When Yeats said “the worst are full of passionate intensity” he seemed to understand that we would end up with something like Twitter.
Yet, of course, the center held in 2012. Obama won re-election not because he was a progressive – in fact by 2012 many on the left were disenchanted with him. He won because many Americans in the middle saw him as a reasonably effective President who was unlikely to do major damage – remember, he came into office in the midst of the 2008-2009 economic crash, but by 2012 things were notably better.
Ever since Trump’s election in 2016, I’ve been wondering if the center can still hold. I wonder this when I see a Republican party still dominated by Trump’s authoritarian, anti-democratic shadow. And I wonder when I see a Democratic party that cannot seem to get out of its own way- and get the things done that most Americans want done.
More Things We Agree On …
Americans not only agree on the importance of big issues like addressing climate change, providing access to healthcare, improving education, keeping our communities safe, and gun safety. We also agree on a host of issues where the press loves to portray us as polarized:
- 72% of Americans support “a woman’s right to choose and make decisions about her body and personal life.” (7) A Pew Research Survey done in March of this year found that “As the country approaches what could be a watershed moment in the history of abortion laws and policies, relatively few Americans on either side of the debate take an absolutist view on the legality of abortion– either supporting or opposing it at all times, regardless of circumstances. By contrast, 71% say it should be mostly legal or mostly illegal or say there are exceptions to their blanket support for or opposition to legal abortion.”
- 87% of Americans believe “government has a responsibility to protect the lives, livelihoods and rights of all Americans.” (8)
- Most Americans believe that the President should be required to get congressional approval before any-first use of nuclear weapons (9)
- 62% of Americans agree that “immigrants today strengthen our country because of their hard work and talents.” (10)
- 77% of Americans say that “there should be limits on the amount individuals and organizations can spend on political campaigns” (11) and, on a closely related note, most of us favor overturning Citizens United.
Why Can’t We Do What We Agree On?
Let me make a (sort of) bold statement. America would be a much, much better country if we could somehow get our government to do what we actually agree on.
Which begs a question about why it is so hard to get that to happen.
We seem to be able to move quickly when there is a political consensus to do so on both the right and left – witness the speed at which we have come up with funding to aid the Ukrainians, even approving $40 billion in assistance in the past week. Yet when our politicians divide, we end up in a quagmire – see Biden’s domestic agenda.
I think the problem – and the potential solution to the problem – has a lot to do with anti-democratic mechanisms that are built into our (flawed) democracy. Which seem to prevent us from doing what the majority wants.
Let’s start with the electoral college. Somehow, we’ve managed to have a situation where the most important election we have – for the presidency- is also the only election which is NOT decided by who gets the most votes. Many of the issues described above will eventually, sooner rather than later, end up at the Supreme Court. Yet, five of the nine current Supreme Court Justices – John Roberts, Samuel Alito Jr, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett – were nominated by George W Bush or Trump – presidents who did not get into office by winning the most votes.
How about the Senate filibuster? More than anything else, that’s what has stalled Biden’s domestic agenda. By what justification does our senior legislative branch, the Senate, require 60 of 100 votes to get anything meaningful done?
In the business world, most organizations recognize the importance of innovation. They may or may not be any good at it, but they get that innovation is important. Yet, in our government, we’ve had two political parties that have had a stranglehold on the system since the Whigs disappeared in the 1850s. Third parties could be a source of innovation in our political system, as they have served in other countries. Most Americans also agree that we should “make it easier for third party candidates to compete.” (12)
What we have here is a crisis of confidence in our democracy, even though it’s the longest standing democracy in the world. Not surprisingly, 70% of Americans say that “the country is in crisis and at risk of failing.” (13)
The Democrats don’t have as much to run on this year as they would like, given their stalled legislative agendas. Perhaps they should simply run on the promise that they are going to figure out how to fix our democracy and be specific about how. That would distinguish them from the other guys.
Notes
- “Americans United on a Slew of Issues”, Politico, 9.15.2020
- “Major Report Finds Nearly 150 Issues on which Majority of Republicans and Democrats Agree”, publicconsultation.org, 8.7.2020
- “Americans Agree About More Issues Than They Realize”, Axios, 5.2.2021
- “Americans United on a Slew of Issues”, Politico, 9.15.2020
- Pew Research, 8.11.2021
- “Americans United on a Slew of Issues”, Politico, 9.15.2020
- “Americans United on a Slew of Issues”, Politico, 9.15.2020
- “Americans United on a Slew of Issues”, Politico, 9.15.2020
- “Major Report Finds Nearly 150 Issues on which Majority of Republicans and Democrats Agree”, publicconsultation.org, 8.7.2020
- Business Insider, 7.3.2021
- Pew Research, 5.8.2018
- “Major Report Finds Nearly 150 Issues on which Majority of Republicans and Democrats Agree”, publicconsultation.org, 8.7.2020
- “Americans Say U.S. Democracy Is In Crisis As the Big Lie Takes Root”, NPR, 1.5.2022
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