Tips for Liberals: How to Talk to Conservatives Who Disagree With You

Political conversations have a predictable problem: we usually know what the other person is going to say before they say it.

Or at least we think we do.

Liberals often hear conservatives as cold, uncaring, or resistant to change. Conservatives often hear liberals as idealistic, overly confident in government solutions, or disconnected from the practical consequences of their ideas. Neither perception is necessarily fair, but if you’re trying to persuade someone, it matters how your argument is being heard.

If you’re liberal, you’ve probably heard conservative arguments about abortion, guns, healthcare, and transgender issues dozens of times. You know the talking points. You know the politicians. You know some of the worst things people on the right have said about each issue.

But you don’t necessarily know what the conservative sitting across from you believes.

You already know what you believe. The harder part may be giving the other person enough room to explain what they actually believe—and making an argument they won’t dismiss before you’ve had a chance to make it.

Don’t Assume the Worst Reason They Disagree With You

Disagreement with your solution doesn’t tell you why someone disagrees with it.

Before assuming indifference, selfishness, prejudice, or some other motive, give the person a chance to explain their actual position. Sometimes those ugly motives really do exist. Racism, sexism, cruelty, and prejudice aren’t imaginary, and productive political discussion doesn’t require pretending otherwise.

But assigning those motives to an individual before they’ve demonstrated them usually accomplishes very little. Once you tell someone what terrible thing you think motivates them, they’re no longer considering your argument. They’re defending their character.

You may also discover that you’ve been arguing against a position they don’t actually hold.

Political labels hide enormous differences. Two people who call themselves conservative may have very different beliefs about abortion, guns, healthcare, or transgender issues. Give the person you’re actually talking to a chance to tell you where they stand.

Then argue with that position.

Find the Agreement Before the Disagreement

Political arguments often begin several steps too late.

Before arguing about a solution, figure out whether you even disagree about the outcome you’re trying to achieve. If you both want the same basic result, say so. That narrows the disagreement and makes it harder for either person to turn a policy dispute into a judgment about the other’s character.

Americans see relatively little common ground between Republicans and Democrats in Washington, especially on issues such as abortion and guns. But the positions of the two people actually having a conversation may be considerably more complicated—and closer—than you’d think. (Pew)

Common ground isn’t surrender, and it isn’t a trick to make somebody like you. It’s a way of figuring out what you’re actually arguing about.

Maybe you agree completely about the problem but disagree about the solution. Maybe you agree on the broad goal but define success differently. Or maybe the apparent common ground disappears as soon as you ask another question.

All of those discoveries make for a better conversation because you’ve stopped fighting over disagreements that may not actually exist.

Show That Your Idea Survived Contact With Reality

Liberals are often willing to imagine ambitious solutions to difficult problems. That’s not necessarily a weakness. Plenty of worthwhile changes began with someone refusing to accept that the way things are is the way they have to remain.

But wanting a better outcome isn’t enough.

What happens after your policy takes effect? How will people, businesses, and institutions respond? What incentives change? Could the solution make something more expensive or harder to obtain? Could people exploit it? How much bureaucracy or administration does it require? What happens five or ten years later?

And one question deserves more attention in politics generally: How will we know whether it worked?

You don’t need a perfect answer to every possible objection. Conservatives certainly don’t. But acknowledging obvious tradeoffs yourself demonstrates that you’ve thought beyond the first effect of the policy.

That matters when you’re talking to someone who may already expect your proposal to be based more on what should happen than what realistically will happen.

Idealism has value. Many things worth changing require it. Idealism that has survived serious questions about implementation and consequences is much harder to dismiss.

Advocacy Isn’t the Same as Doing Something

It’s easy to spend a lot of time talking about what other people should do.

Government should help. Corporations should contribute more. Wealthy people should pay more. Society needs to address this problem.

Sometimes those arguments are right. Some problems require collective action, government can accomplish things individual charity cannot, and political advocacy has produced enormous improvements.

But advocating for someone else to solve a problem can also create a comforting sense that we’ve done something about it when we haven’t.

Imagine a liberal and a conservative arguing about homelessness for an hour. The liberal spends the conversation demanding more government assistance. The conservative spends it explaining why another government program won’t work. Eventually, they both go home.

What changed for the homeless person?

Nothing.

Yet it’s easy for the person who spent the hour advocating for assistance to walk away feeling as though they occupied the compassionate side of the argument.

If an issue genuinely matters to you, occasionally ask a different question: What can we do?

Maybe you volunteer. Maybe you donate. Maybe you help one person. Maybe you support an organization already producing results. Maybe you discover through that experience that the problem really does require government action, and now you have a much stronger argument for it.

You don’t have to personally solve a national problem before you’re allowed to advocate for public policy. Advocacy matters, and thoughtful political discussion matters too. That’s a large part of what we’re doing on this site.

But there is credibility in having some skin in the game.

There can also be something surprisingly productive about two people who disagree politically asking what they can accomplish together instead of spending the entire conversation assigning responsibility to somebody who isn’t in the room.

If You Don’t Like Their Answer, Ask for a Better One

Finding common ground doesn’t require accepting a bad conservative solution—or accepting no solution at all.

If you’ve established that you both recognize a problem, explain why you think your approach would work. If the conservative thinks it won’t, hear the objection and then ask the obvious follow-up: What would you do instead?

Actually listen to the answer. They may have an alternative you hadn’t considered. Their proposal may have problems of its own. You may discover that you’re closer than either of you expected. Or you may discover that they’ve spent years opposing liberal solutions without developing much of an alternative. That’s useful too.

Liberals can sometimes reach too quickly for large government solutions. Conservatives can sometimes be much better at explaining why those solutions won’t work than explaining what should replace them. Putting both tendencies on the table gives each side something more useful to do than defend its political team.

If we agree that a problem is worth solving, “your solution is bad” should usually be the beginning of the conversation, not the end.

Talking About Specific Issues

Abortion: Find Out What They Actually Believe

Abortion is particularly vulnerable to assumed motives and assumed positions.

If you begin by assuming someone opposes abortion because they want to control women, you’re unlikely to get very far with someone whose actual concern is the moral status of the fetus. But don’t make the opposite assumption either. Not every person who opposes abortion has exactly the same belief about conception, fetal development, personhood, viability, exceptions, IVF, or what the law should prohibit. Pew’s research on abortion and IVF illustrates just how complicated those combinations of beliefs can be.

Find out what this person believes.

If someone tells you that human life begins at conception, you don’t necessarily have to begin by attacking that premise. You can ask about what they believe and what follows from that belief.

Consider IVF. Imagine a fire at a fertility clinic. In one area are 100 viable embryos. In another is a toddler. You can save only one. Which would they save?

If they would instinctively save the toddler, that doesn’t mean they believe the embryos are worthless. You haven’t won the argument at this point. Also, for people who have gone through IVF, embryos can represent enormous hope, sacrifice, and the possibility of desperately wanted children. The point isn’t to diminish that experience or suggest those embryos have no value.

The question is narrower: Do we actually assign 100 embryos greater moral weight than one toddler simply because all are human life? Why does the toddler take priority?

If they would save the toddler, then “life begins at conception” hasn’t settled the question of whether we value human life identically at every stage. There is still room to discuss how we value developing human life, whether that value changes, how it should be balanced against other interests, and where the law should draw its lines.

And moral and legal questions aren’t always the same. You can believe something is morally wrong without believing government should prohibit it, just as you can believe something should remain legal without personally approving of it.

That distinction doesn’t resolve abortion. It can help you identify which part of abortion you’re actually arguing about.

Guns: Deal With the Country We Actually Live In

If you’re advocating for gun restrictions, don’t assume that describing them as “common sense” makes the case. A conservative gun owner may immediately be thinking about the enormous number of firearms already in private hands, criminals who possess guns illegally, differences among state laws, enforcement, constitutional rights, and what your proposal would actually change.

Those aren’t automatically excuses to do nothing. They’re questions a serious proposal should confront.

There is also likely more common ground here than the political argument suggests. Most people want their children safe at school, their families safe at church or the grocery store, and fewer people being shot. Establishing that doesn’t tell you which gun policies are good, but it does allow you to stop arguing about who cares more about shootings and start arguing about what might actually reduce them.

If you support a particular restriction, explain how you think it would work in the United States as it actually exists. Consider what happens to firearms people already own, how the proposal affects illegal possession, whether different state laws undermine its effectiveness, how it would be enforced, and what evidence suggests it would improve safety. The ATF’s research on firearms trafficking is a useful place to start if you want to understand some of the ways guns actually move into illegal markets.

Then give the conservative the same responsibility. If your proposal won’t work, what would?

Healthcare: Agree on Where You’re Going Before Fighting About the Route

Healthcare may be one of the easiest places to find genuine common ground.

Try starting here:

We both want people to have access to quality, affordable healthcare, right?

If the answer is yes, that’s meaningful. You no longer need to argue about whether either of you cares about people getting medical care. You’ve established where you both want to go, and the interesting disagreement is about how to get there.

Maybe you think government should play a much larger role. The conservative may think competition, deregulation, different insurance structures, individual responsibility, charity, or some combination would work better. Opposition to your preferred government program doesn’t automatically mean opposition to affordable healthcare itself.

Make the case for your approach, and ask them to make the case for theirs. Then compare what each solution actually accomplishes. How well does it control costs? What happens to access and choice? What incentives does it create? Who falls through the cracks? What happens when the system doesn’t work as intended?

You may end the conversation still convinced that your solution is better. That’s fine. But now you’re disagreeing about healthcare policy instead of accusing each other of not caring about people’s health.

That’s progress.

Trans Issues: Don’t Demand the Entire Package at Once

Discussions about transgender issues can quickly become arguments about everything simultaneously: sex, gender, pronouns, bathrooms, sports, children, medical treatment, discrimination, and even the definitions of “man” and “woman.”

That’s an enormous amount to ask anyone to reconsider in one conversation.

Instead, find the closest place where you genuinely agree.

Whatever we disagree about regarding sex and gender, can we agree that transgender adults should have the opportunity to live happy, fulfilling lives and be treated with basic dignity?

If the answer is yes, resist the temptation to immediately explain why that answer requires agreement with every other part of your position. The person may be willing to reconsider how a transgender coworker should be treated while remaining completely unmoved on women’s sports. They might rethink pronouns without changing their views about medical treatment for minors.

Those distinctions can be frustrating when you see the issues as interconnected, but persuasion rarely happens all at once.

You don’t have to pretend partial agreement is complete agreement. You also don’t have to punish someone for moving only part of the distance you hoped they would.

Political conversations become much more productive when we leave room for people to change their minds a little at a time.

Make Room for Their Actual Position

There is a frustrating cycle that happens in political conversations.

Conservatives don’t always explain their actual positions particularly well. They may tell you what they’re against, assume the rest is obvious, and leave important parts unstated.

Liberals can make a different mistake. After making their own position clear, they sometimes assume they already understand what the conservative believes and why.

Those habits feed each other.

When the conservative hasn’t adequately explained their position, the liberal fills in the blanks. If that interpretation is inaccurate or insulting, the conservative becomes defensive. The liberal may then interpret the defensiveness as confirmation that the original assumption was right.

The way out isn’t complicated: leave enough room in the conversation for the other person to explain themselves, and ask them to do it.

That doesn’t mean accepting their explanation uncritically. Ask questions, challenge contradictions, and ask what they would do instead. If their reasoning doesn’t hold up, say so. But argue with the position they actually hold rather than the one you expected them to have.

You may still disagree strongly when the conversation ends. That’s normal. A productive political discussion doesn’t require someone to surrender.

Sometimes getting two people to stop arguing with imaginary versions of each other is a pretty meaningful improvement.