Almost everyone agrees there should be more compromises in politics. So I’m curious, how would that play out?
While I love the policy debates and the nuances, most people go for the big issues. So, according to the party platforms/my gut, here’s what I’d put as the 3 for each party:
Democrats: Abortion rights, gun control, climate change.
Republicans: Immigration, culture war (say, critical race theory in schools or gender affirming care for minors) , trump gets to be president. (Sorry but it really seems like a cult of personality at this point.)
Anyway, here’s the exercise: say the other side was willing to give up on all three of their issues but you had to give up on one of your side’s. OR, you can have two of your side’s but have to give up on the third.
Just curious to see how this plays out. (You are of course free to name other priorities you think better represent the parties but obviously if you write “making Joe Pesci day a national holiday” as a priority and give it up, that doesn’t really count.)
Edit: The consensus seems to be a big no to compromise. Which, fair, I imagine those on the Right feel just as strongly about what they would call baby murdering and replacing American workers etc.
Just kind of sad to see it in action.
But thanks/congrats to those who did try and work through a compromise!
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Almost everyone agrees there should be more compromises in politics
Bullshit.
Republicans want to “compromise” by getting everything they want.
Moderates politicians want “compromise” by giving them half and telling progressives to be happy Republicans only get half.
So most politicians say they want compromise, but I’d have to see a source for “almost everyone” saying it. Most voters don’t want compromise.
I mean, if you look at the responses in this thread, most folks have put their compromise as getting everything they want on the Dem side of things…
Though, you’re not entirely wrong on the compromise thing. It’s one of those things people say they want until they realize that means giving up on what they want. You might enjoy this old 538 article about it, which has this painful pair of paragraphs on the subject:
But how much does bipartisanship actually matter to voters? Americans have long said they prefer that the parties work together, and respondents in Morning Consult’s poll were no different. For instance, 85 percent of voters said it was very or somewhat important for legislation to have bipartisan support, 69 percent agreed that policies with bipartisan backing were the best policies, and 62 percent disagreed with the idea that it was a waste of time for politicians to seek bipartisan support. What’s more, there were no meaningful differences between how Democrats and Republicans answered these questions.
However, polls also show that many Americans are willing to scrap bipartisanship if it means passing legislation that their party prefers. For instance, a 2019 poll from the Pew Research Center found that despite majorities of Democrats (69 percent) and Republicans (61 percent) saying it was very important that elected officials be willing to compromise, members of both parties thought it was more important for officials from the other party to compromise than it was for officials from their own party to do so. Seventy-nine percent of Democrats thought it was very important for Republican lawmakers to compromise compared with just 41 percent of Republicans. Likewise, 78 percent of Republicans thought it was very important for Democratic lawmakers to compromise compared with 48 percent of Democrats.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-much-do-americans-really-care-about-bipartisanship/
Wait, you are saying we can have comprehensive environmental restoration and an honest fight vs. climate change if one of the other two is given up?
Gun control for sure for me. Enforce the laws we have, though.
If there was something I give up on, it’s gun control. For several reasons:
- There’s basically no gun control anyways so it’s not like we’re giving up something.
- Compared to abortion rights (ie bodily autonomy) and climate change (ie existential crisis), not having gun control is the least bad. It’s still pretty crucial, to be fair, but comparing to actual existential crises like the other 2, not having gun control doesn’t seem that bad in comparison
There is no room for a discussion. It’s like one side saying “kill everyone” and the other side is saying “let’s not kill people” then people are like “well, let’s compromise and kill just some people, it’s only fair.” No, I’m done. Democrats have been way too tame and compromising for too long, I’m done entertaining this BS.
Ironically, that is almost exactly how the pro-life movement feels about abortion.
I’m sure they do. But the thing is science at stats don’t back their stance.
Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, that’s a pretty iffy claim when we’re getting into what counts as life.
If I push a pregnant woman down some stairs and cause her to lose a baby, we all still view it as a despicable act, much worse than if she’d not been pregnant.
I personally am all for abortion rights but I’m not arrogant enough to decide everyone else is absolutely wrong and I am the arbiter of what is and isn’t life.
One side has stats that have down that Roe V Wade massively reduced crime as less children were born into the system or unwanted. The burden of an unwanted child can ruin both the parents and childs life. We’ve seen how abortion bans can lead to doctors being scared to do anything in some situations causing the mother to die.
The other side is people saying a fetus has a soul because an old book told them so.
It’s pretty clear which side should be backed. Not saying either side is perfect, but one side has a lot more supporting evidence than the other.
Let’s not forget, the pro choice side is just that, you have a choice. No one is forcing anything, the other side is. Again, the choice is clear to me.
The example of pushing a woman down the stairs is silly. The reason why it’s worse if she’s pregnant is because you took away her choice and opportunity to have that baby, after she is dealing with all that comes with being pregnant. That is not the same as a person who is a month in and doesn’t want it, by her choice.
Again, I’m not trying to argue for one side over the other. I’m just saying that from their point of view, both sides have some sense of legitimacy. I tend to agree with you that abortion should be available to all who want one because it’s not my damned decision to make.
But yet again, for the pro-lifers, murdering babies, no matter how good the results etc might be is fundamentally wrong.
The reason why it’s worse if she’s pregnant is because you took away her choice and opportunity to have that baby
To each their own I guess. I personally would feel horrible about killing a child not just removing a temporary opportunity or something. I’m not saying it’s the same as an abortion, just that we on a fundamental level do understand that the fetus isn’t just a clump of cells.
Sad you’re downvoted for pointing out the truth, it’s not even your opinion!
Welcome to Lemmy! Downvotes will be your guide.
Do you consider yourself a partisan? The pervasive notion that there are “two sides” and you must be on one of them, it results in ordinary citizens viewing one another with suspicion and fear. It’s a useful lie that serves the interests of those who would foster division in order to maintain the cultural status quo.
Not calling you out in particular. Just that I think about this every time something is posted that perpetuates this false “our team, their team” narrative because it’s a powerful, insipid tool of oppression against the common person. True, people differ on contentious issues, sometimes irreconcilably. But if we are made to view one another as dyed-in-the-wool adversaries over that, we will fail to discover our common interests much less promote them through solidarity.
Not denying that the two major political parties in the United States do hold seemingly unassailable dominance in major elections like the one we’re entering, largely due to determining winner by first-past-the-post. And yes, sadly it’s very often the case that a meaningful vote will support one of those parties. But it doesn’t have to be this way forever. In fact, I will be able to vote for city office candidates by ranked choice starting this year!
Sorry for the rant. Not an expert. Just a dude who wants to love his neighbor.
The pervasive notion that there are “two sides” and you must be on one of them
Nah, though there is an irony to arguing that the notion of two sides means we view each other with suspicion right after deciding what I believe because of the question I asked.
Just like you, I get that there are two major political parties, one of which will hold power, both of which view the other as the enemy. I asked this to see what the general consensus would be as my friends and I played a similar game and were stymied pretty quickly.
Just a dude who wants to love his neighbor.
And the big issue seems to be that the two sides have drastically different definitions of the word “love”. There was a study a while ago, which found that conservatives are more likely to have liberal friends, while liberals are less likely to have conservative friends. It sounds odd on the surface… But the reality is that if a liberal hangs out with conservatives long enough to become friends, those conservatives will eventually get comfortable. Comfortable enough to start using hard slurs, or they will call the liberal “one of the good ones” as if it’s a compliment.
It’s no wonder that liberals are less likely to report having conservative friends. Liberals have tried, and have been burned by all of the conservatives that they got close to. Meanwhile, the most offensive thing a liberal does around conservatives is just… Exist? Relatively speaking, it’s easy for a conservative to keep liberals around, because the liberal isn’t constantly trying to undermine the conservative’s right to personhood. Whether or not you can own guns isn’t an immediate existential threat to a conservative.
In this study, were the terms “conservative” and “liberal” self-applied by the subjects? People do adopt those labels for themselves, but I would urge careful consideration before doing so. Where they can be useful in describing one’s position on a specific issue, when applied directly to the person they are needlessly reductive. Exactly the sort of thing that facilitates the mental assignment of oneself or others into an imaginary camp on one side of a false dichotomy.
The essence of what you are saying makes sense to me, and I do understand those terms are routinely applied to people both by themselves and by others. But your post, though well-meaning also serves to perpetuate the “conservatives vs. liberals” view of political discourse. I realize I may be Sisyphus under the boulder here, but it’s my challenge to the United States political duopoly.
Great question. Democracy is all about compromise. I am bothered by how few people seem to grasp this fact. Personally, when I hear the phrase “squabbling politicians”, I roll my eyes - to squabble is their job! They’re doing it on our behalf because people have different interests and different values and so we don’t all agree, and that is a good thing. A polity where everybody agrees - well, there are names for that kind of political system and none of them are democracy.
Over here in Europe, I just wish the progressive parties (for whom I vote) would do the obvious deal and sacrifice their dilatory approach to immigration and in particular border security. This issue is undermining all their other policy goals. The obvious allergy of voters to porous borders is not just a result of disinformation, and taking a tougher line on it does not necessarily mean infringing human rights.
I am bothered by how few people seem to grasp this fact.
Yeah, some of the responses in this thread have been predictable but still disheartening.
would do the obvious deal and sacrifice their dilatory approach to immigration and in particular border security.
100%. It just seems like the progressives are losing the war for the sake of being in the moral feel good category, witness the rise of the Far Right in Poland, Germany, France and probably others that I’m too ignorant to know about (sorry!) That being said, reading over this thread and you can kind of see why the Progressive parties are in a bit of a bind, we do seem allergic to the notion that we might not get everything we want.
Indeed. The moral purity issue has always been the Achilles heel of progressive politics. It makes compromise hard and it drives heretics - i.e. the people whose votes you need - crazy.
Guns: A well regulated militia includes gun registration and training requirements. The fear based self defense justification is a bunch of baloney. The compromise is being able to keep guns if you are part of that well regulated militia, which should probably require not being a violent felon along with guns being taken away for other people’s safety, like when domestic violence allegations are involved.
Abortion rights: A woman and a doctor decide when and how she has an abortion. Since a doctor already has an oath to life, they won’t abort a viable and healthy fetus anyway so they can compromise on how that situation works out.
I don’t really have anything to compromise on with Republicans because they oppose basic rights that impact no one else, and compromising rights is only necessary when the impact the rights of others.
I am willing to compromise and allow trial by combat to be reintroduced as a valid judicial process. The only caveat is that the wealthy cannot appoint champions to fight for them.
Seriously though, I’m not in love with either party. Honestly, there are things I despise about both. Most Americans are pretty middle of the road. It’s the extremists and the parties holding the country hostage, not the American people.
Ahaha, I really enjoy this comment.
I think you’re right, most folks are middle of the road but damned if I can think of a way to get the middle to actually dominate politics…
Compromise can only exist when there’s at least one coincidence of interest. A greater good or similar common value that motivates the parties to negotiate over the aisle on individual issues. The principles, values, goals and even worldview of the two party system in the US is radically polarized. Which makes it almost impossible to negotiate a compromise. Right now, the few policy issues they agree on are nonessential points (supporting Israel, e.g.) that don’t weight the balance and exist out of pure accident. It exist on either side for completely different reasons. When one side argues that some people deserves to die, it is hard to negotiate when the protection of life and dignity is above all for the other side. But compounded by the fact that they don’t even agree what life, person hood and dignity even mean.
Probably towards the centre with a tilt towards liberalism but like both in terms of being socially and economically liberal. Ideal government would let everyone do whatever they wanted to until it interfered with anyone else doing whatever they wanted to do.
I could see myself being a Libertarian if they didn’t say stupid stuff like “the market will regulate corporations”. Grow the fuck up. The market is absolutely and completely dominated by the corporations. There is no free market.
PS, the “grow up” comment was aimed at the party, not at you.
I’m afraid you’re not likely to get many actual answers on Lemmy. The politics here can be wildly, wildly skewed, and it doesn’t generally create a conducive environment to calm, rational discussions. (In fairness, I’m not sure if any other site really does support truly balanced political discussion either.) I admire your attempt, however.
Another issue (which some others have already commented on) is what constitutes a “compromise”. For instance, if I have four issues which left and right-wing movements are at odds over, is it “compromise” if for each of the two I decide to go with a strongly left- or right-wing position? Or is it only compromise if for all positions we take a moderate position which cleaves to neither bloc’s position?
Anyhow, let me at least try to answer. Though I lean more left, I still find myself out of line with both major parties on some issues. For example: In the interests of addressing climate change and achieving stronger energy reliability and independence, I favor a drive to increase, not remove, hydroelectric dams and nuclear power facilities in the country.
