Where Is This 73 Percent of Americans Who Want Democrats to Work With Trump?

A new poll commissioned for The Hill website found that 73 percent of voters want to see Democrats work with President Trump, versus only 27 percent who said Dems should resist Trump's every move.Looking just at the Democratic voters polled, 52 percent say their party should work with the president and 48 percent say they shouldn't.This poll set me to wondering exactly how these data points fit into everything we are reading and hearing from the Resist Trump movement. Is it possible that -- lost in the #notmypresident demonstrations and social media campaigns -- at least a slight majority of Dems still wants to see bipartisanship with the White House?Released over the weekend, this news didn't make any headlines, absent a few conservative sites that picked up The Hill article. But the results pose an interesting challenge for Democrats in Washington: The loudest voices are saying "Obstruct!" yet another point of view, as captured by the Harvard-Harris poll, whispers "find common ground."Critics may tell you that The Hill, the largest of any Capitol Hill publication and proclaiming itself nonpartisan, tips slightly conservative. But Harvard-Harris polling combines the forces of two distinguished operations and is considerably legit. The same poll that found the 73-27 data point was included in a new fivethirtyeight article about Trump's approval rating. (Harvard-Harris' work for The Hill found 52 percent of voters disapprove of the job Trump is doing while 48 percent of voters approve.)The Harvard-Harris poll, the first of what is a yearlong partnership with The Hill, shows that just as voters want Democrats to compromise with Trump, they want the president to do the same. The poll found that a strong majority of voters -- 68 percent -- want Trump to find ways to work with Democrats in Congress, while 32 percent say Trump shouldn't bend.The GOP-voters-only slice, like the Democratic voters piece, is closer: with 48 percent wanting compromise and 52 percent saying Trump shouldn't flinch.Bottom line of all this data? According to Mark Penn, co-director of the Harvard-Harris poll, "This shows that voters want Trump and Democrats to compromise and if they don't they both may pay a heavy price with the electorate."(For those interested in how the polling was done: The online survey of 2,148 registered voters was conducted between Feb. 11 and 13. The partisan breakdown is 39 percent Democrat, 30 percent Republican, 27 percent independent and five percent other.)In the seemingly new world order cascading out of a White House doing business unlike anything I've seen in my lifetime, it's probably not surprising that polling showing that Americans want Democrats to work with Trump gets lost in The Daily Outrage.Some days the backlash -- and its coverage -- worries me as much as The Daily Outrage itself. A number of Trump's actions are truly reprehensible. Yet if Red Alert becomes the daily de facto response, it loses its power and we can't distinguish stupid statements from dangerous policy.Put another way: Trump's misinformed swipe at Sweden doesn't equate playing footsie with the Russians.And that brings me back to the 73 percent of all voters/52 percent of Democrats who want to see the Democratic members of Congress work with Trump.It's probably no surprise that we aren't hearing those voices. Not only are the members of the most liberal and conservative bases the ones who suck most of the oxygen out of the room, but in today's take-no-prisoners war, if you say anything that resembles bipartisanship, you're likely to get your head chopped off.Still, it's worth noting that American voters want something more productive than the gridlock and anger that grips our country. It will be interesting to see if their voices are heeded.  Continue reading...