Every so often, and frequently with no one paying much attention, something happens in Washington that goes against the grain. This month, House Democrats unveiled articles of impeachment the same morning they announced a deal with the Trump White House updating NAFTA. If everything in Washington centered on conflict, President Donald Trump and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., would never have been able to align themselves on a major trade agreement.
And yet there they were, serving up evidence that division and consensus can sit, however uncomfortably, side by side.
What did that moment tell us? Riven though we are, we are also, on many matters, united. The paradox of this moment presents Democrats with an opportunity.
Trump knows that conflict is his lifeblood. Division fit the 2016 zeitgeist, a moment when the electorate was hungry to give the elite a long-awaited comeuppance. And the president can still find plenty of places in the country where his hateful rhetoric finds a hungry audience.
But things have since taken a turn. Today, the president's inability to get more than 45 percent in most polls suggests the electorate's thirst for conflict has morphed into something else — namely, an equal desire for consensus.
Ahead of 2020, voters are desperate for someone who will tap into the lost sense of community that Barack Obama embraced when he famously argued at the height of our national split over Iraq that "there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America." They are in search of someone who will provide a more accurate picture of how much we agree on, someone who will shine a light on how we can rise above the conflicts that divide us.
The evidence is irrefutable. By a margin of 74% to 21%, Gallup polling this year found that Americans believe trade is an "opportunity for economic growth through increased U.S. exports" as opposed to a "threat to the economy from foreign imports." Some 83% of Americans believe that "dreamers," the undocumented adults brought to the United States as children, should be protected from deportation. And 83% support staying in NATO, despite the White House's insistence that the United States is getting a raw deal.
Consensus is deeper than we like to admit — it's reflected in the country's preferences on foreign, social and economic fronts alike. Roughly 80% believe that humans are driving climate change. A poll in 2018 found that more than 3 in 5 Americans believe that government is doing too little to preserve the environment, and that only 9 percent believe that government is doing too much. Roughly 2 of every 3 Americans favor stricter gun laws. And a broad majority supports making the tax code more progressive.
