Call me naive or stubborn but these aren’t points I would compromise at all with.

Abortion rights: People have the right to bodily autonomy. Anything less means that you don’t own yourself.

Gun Control: People have a right to live safely and without fear or going to school to be shot up or at the mall. The fact that gun violence and school shootings are a regular occurrence is not a good thing.

Climate Change: Every single scientist is literally saying the next few decades will see some of the worst weather patterns in human history and that’s even if we go to 0 emissions starting tomorrow. This will affect humanity on a global scale and cause unprecedented population displacement and suffering.

Any compromise on any of these posts means you are causing some kind of demographic to suffer and die simply to appease the egos of individuals who lack empathy.

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.

If there was something I give up on, it’s gun control. For several reasons:

1. There’s basically no gun control anyways so it’s not like we’re giving up something.
2. 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

I don’t pander to fascists. None.

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.

I’m fine with getting rid of the immigrants in America but it has to be all immigrants. European, every body. Got to get a visa from the native peoples if you want to stay and work. Hopefully they reject the racists.

Human rights are not a compromise. I will not even entertain the idea of compromising those. Abortion rights stay.

Gun control is an iffy one. It really should be fixed, but it will take decades of continuing reforms and filtering firearms out of the market to really get it to where it should be. On a short term basis, “compromising” (but not giving up) on this would be OK.

Climate change will obviously just kill us all, soooo…

In a keep two, give one scenario to shut Republicans up for an election cycle, it would be safe to compromise on gun control in exchange for cementing proper human rights and getting meaningful climate action.

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 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.

I’d give up any and every gun point in favor of police reform, proper election and transition of power legislation, and climate change.

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.

The Dems really should give up the party line on gun control. Red flag laws make a lot of sense, but bans on specific weapons are unpopular,
Ineffective, unworkable, and almost certainly unconstitutional.

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.

The problem here, what do you mean by compromise?

Like, those may be comparatively low on your personal agenda, which is fine. But there’s still going to be some end result of a compromise.

Personally, I find the Democratic more-restrictive position on firearms to be one of the biggest turn-offs about the party. I think that there’s constant pressure to try to erode a constitutional right there in a way that wouldn’t be tolerated for other rights. My own view is that if the goal is to restrict the Second Amendment, you have to do so via constitutional amendment, and you have to have a serious conversation about the design and intent of the thing that’s a lot deeper and inclusive of the reasons that the right was written into the Constitution than something like “you don’t need a large magazine to hunt deer” or some other really shallow stuff like that. It hasn’t been particularly prominent at the national level for a couple of decades, but it’s always there at a low level, and “if the Democrats get enough political power, are they going to go adopt gun policy that I find highly objectionable” is one of my major personal concerns. So, okay, I’m with you on saying that in my personal ideal world, there’d be more concessions on firearms policy.

But…there are also policies that I wouldn’t agree with as to firearms.

So…when one says “compromise”, what are you looking to see compromise on? Like, it makes a big difference.

Like, I’d probably be at least willing to at least discuss having a ban on handguns, as long as it went through via constitutional amendment. Handguns are the most-commonly-owned form of firearm in the US, represent over half of the firearms in the US. Canada does something like this, is more-restrictive of handguns. Handguns are associated with a lot of crime, and probably the least-useful for the sort of concerns that the Founders had; ensuring that political power remained with the public. On the other hand, I think that the GCA requiring a (deniable) federal license for automatic weapons should not have passed constitutional examination. I would personally be willing to swap the two policies. I am also very confident that there are people who feel the exact opposite way about the two policies and favor the status quo, would be worried about wider availability of automatic weapons but are determined to have the ability to carry a comfortable-to-keep-with-oneself weapon at hand.

Or take climate change. I think that there’s a pretty good case that the world is better off with less carbon emissions. I also think that a lot of number of objectionable policies have been passed using “climate change” as a really broad defense. To take one example, corn ethanol probably doesn’t do much to reduce carbon emissions. It does mean that some states in the central US that benefit more from agriculture can get subsidies that one can sell to people on the coasts who are worried about climate change. I don’t think that corn ethanol is really defensible, at least on the grounds on which it was sold, and I am generally not really happy with people hauling out “climate change” as a magic wand to defend a lot of policies when people start asking about the economics or other issues. But I also don’t think that just ignoring carbon emissions is going to be a good move, not unless we have very solid and successful geoengineering work done and believe that it’s just more-efficient to pull carbon out of the atmosphere, one way or another, via iron fertilization of plankton or what-have-you. So…sure, there are concessions in the area of climate change that I’d like to see made. But I don’t know if I can say that I’d like to see concessions in all areas of climate change made.

In general, on the topics you listed:

• Gun rights. I’m generally more-in-line with the Republican position on this. I think that most gun control moves bump up against constitutionality concerns. I think that it’s rare that I’d favor a position popular with the Democratic side of the aisle than the Republican side of the aisle, and on some points, I’d probably push more towards gun rights side of the spectrum than the Republican mainstream would.

• Abortion rights. Personally, I think that the ability to have an abortion is probably a good idea. I’m concerned about the fertility rate dropping to the levels that it has, but I’m skeptical that restricting abortions is anywhere near the top of the list as to how one might address that. I’d support having abortions be an option. On the other hand, I don’t feel that Roe v. Wade was defensible on constitutional grounds; I think that it was driven by SCOTUS at the time feeling that it was a good policy, rather than that it was legitimately a right guaranteed by the Constitution. I think that that’s the wrong way to go about adding rights – you need an amendment for that – and I’m fine with it having been overturned. I also think that restricting abortion smashes into practicality grounds even if one felt that it was a desirable policy; it’s just too easy to cross state boundaries. I kind of feel that maybe the father should have some kind of say as to abortions; while the mother has the physical impact of giving birth, both parents have very large legal obligations to raise a child and I think that that outweighs the bearing and birthing. Maybe if either parent wants to have an abortion, an abortion should be done, which would be an even lower bar for abortions than is the case today.

• Climate change. I think that carbon emissions are a real issue that can’t be ignored, but, as I said above, can also list a number of policies that were put through using “climate change” as a rationale that I don’t think are defensible.

• Immigration. I think that more immigration is virtually always a win for the US. There may be a limit, but it’s higher than what the US has experienced and certainly higher than present-day levels, which are historically low as a percentage of population. Immigration has been a colossal reason for the US’s rise in the world. I think that the concerns about immigration are not new, have been replayed for centuries, and are not really defensible given historical evidence. I also don’t think that the Republican Party is particularly interested in dramatically bringing down immigration, though Republican voters might be and the GOP might be very interested in visibly flailing away at it for political points.

• Culture war. I very rarely agree with conservative positions on culture issues, but I also have a great dislike for using the government to promote progressive positions, and have quite a bit of sympathy when I hear conservatives complain that someone is trying to leverage the government to do so. I think that the government shouldn’t really act as a cultural arbiter. One of my strongest disagreements with some people on some Lemmy communities that I frequent has been people who think that they need to use the government to just make people think “correctly” on some matters. I’d ask them, if they want to institutionalize that, what exactly they think is going to happen if someone who they disagree with comes into power?

• Trump. I don’t like Trump. However, I am not at all worried about national policy in a second Trump administration; I think that there are a lot of folks on the left side of the aisle who have worked themselves into an absolute frenzy completely disconnected from reality over that, and I’m constantly rolling my eyeballs when I see someone get frantic about a “fascist takeover” or the like. We’ve seen Trump in office for four years. From a policy standpoint, it isn’t all that exciting. Hell, if Biden were still running, we’d have one of the most unsurprising elections in American history – two people who have a four-year track record as President and are very much known quantities running against each other. No, my objections to Trump are to him as an individual…first and foremost, he personally tried to leverage undermining the political legitimacy of an election where he had no grounds to stand on at all to try to score points in the next election. Even absent everything else, for me, that alone should disqualify the guy from holding office. I don’t want to start a trend of people doing that. I am unhappy with all of the messages he puts out, don’t think that they’re a good look for the country. I am not happy with his practice of being totally self-inconsistent as to policy. I want there to be dialog on positions, and Trump doesn’t bother to maintain a coherent set of positions. That makes it really hard for democratic dialog to happen, if you can’t pin down what someone is actually proposing doing. I am not happy with some of his actions in office, like Comey being dismissed.

  However, I also don’t think that asking for concessions on Trump makes much sense. Trump ain’t the problem here. Trump is the symptom. If our electoral system, mechanisms of political discourse, media, stuff like that permit for the actions he’s taken to work and to appeal to the public, that’s where the problem lies and that’s where change needs to happen. Removing Trump from the picture is a one-off. If what Trump has done works well, someone else can do the same thing. I don’t particularly want some other guy to do the same thing that Trump has and get into office.

Not everyone is gonna agree with my personal positions. But I think that virtually everyone out there has a more nuanced position on most policy matters than just “pro” or “con”. So it’s hard to just say “concede” on a broad policy area like that.

I don’t think the kind of compromise that is necessary is able to be stated in the way you’re asking for, because of how values feed into beliefs.

Take abortion rights for example: someone who would describe themselves as “pro-life” may argue something that is effectively saying that murdering babies is never okay. I would be in complete agreement there. As someone who is “pro-choice”, the core of my argument is usually some form of “a clump of cells that could become a person does not trump the rights to bodily autonomy that an existing person has”. No progress will be made in this discussion unless we can address the fact that the vast majority of abortions are nowhere near “murdering babies”. That’s where compromise is most likely to happen, in the discussion that arises when trying to reconcile different word views, and coming to speak in mutually intelligible terms.

For example, one area where I and many other abortion advocates have compromised on this front is recognising that the line between “a clump of cells” and “a baby” is pretty blurry. Personally, I don’t know where I stand on where the law should stand on that line; in my country, abortions after 24 weeks can only be done in exceptional cases (mother’s health at risk, foetal anomalies etc.). I think a time limit like this seems reasonable, but I’m not sure whether at 24 weeks, a foetus is more like a clump of cells, or a baby. I have personally had a very early term abortion, and I’m grateful to have had that opportunity, because I have no idea how I’d feel if I was in that 20-24 weeks range. Acknowledging this uncertainty I feel is part of how compromise works. I would hope that someone on the “other side” of the argument would apply a similar approach to try to understand and entertain my argument wrt bodily autonomy. In a way, this is an easy example, because all the leeway in positions has been explored, and the core issue is something that can’t be compromised on (such as how I can’t have a productive discussion with people who are actively against women’s bodily autonomy, or people who believe that life starts at conception).

An area in which I’m working on trying to compromise on is trying to reshape how I think about farmers and other similar social groups. Farmers are a good example because I am a very left wing, queer, university-educated city-living scientist who has Opinions on the climate, and I’m very socially progressive. To some people, I am the big bad Other, an inherent problem with the world. I don’t like this, because certainly I don’t see myself as “the problem”. I’d actually rather like to be part of the solution, but I won’t do that well if I take the easy route of dismissing people like this as just racist, idiotic bigots whose opinions I shouldn’t care about. Many of them are bigoted, but if I don’t want to mass exterminate people whose views are unacceptable to me, nor be exterminated myself, I need to try to imagine a world where I could break bread with these people. That’s a pretty difficult challenge.

PhilosophyTube’s video on Judith Butler helped a lot on this actually. I have been realising more and more that the common ground that exists between me and many of my “political enemies” is that we are humans who are scared and struggling, like me. When I feel hopeless, solidarity pulls me through, and thinking in this way makes it easier to feel compassion for people whose anger and bigotry isolates them from this kind of community support: a person can simultaneously be a product of their environment, and responsible for their actions; they can both be a victim of fascist ideology (through becoming isolated, disempowered and stewing in hate), and also an active perpetrator of said hate.

This reframing isn’t itself compromise, but hopefully if I continue to work to see what I share with the people I most disagree with, I’ll be able to have the kinds of conversations that build compromise. Successful compromise takes a small amount of shared ground and extends that, bit by bit, person by person. That’s why I think your question didn’t get the answers you were hoping for: by the time things become solidified into political parties and manifesto stances, there isn’t much fluidity and ambiguity left to act as space for new, shared understanding.

If you made it to the end of this comment, thanks for bearing with my meandering. If you’d like to read an essay about compromise that’s a much better story than my rambles, you might enjoy this article about a beautifully mundane yet improbable compromise helped build the internet. . The whole article is great, but I especially love this part:

"In the beginning, the disagreements seemed insurmountable, and Miller felt disheartened: ‘The first night we thought: This is gonna fail miserably. At first nobody saw eye to eye or trusted each other enough yet to let each other in and try to figure out the art of the possible.’ But as concessions and then agreements were made, people began to feel energised by the creation of a new system, even if imperfect; one piece at a time, their system could bring the content of the web within reach for everyone. As Caplan remembers: ‘By the second day, there was a lot of drinking and all-night working groups. We were running on adrenaline and energy. By the last day, we realised we were making history.’ "

I take heart in the understanding that compromise is messy, and hard to evaluate when you’re in the thick of it.