Perhaps the single most important thing for Congress and state legislatures - when advancing legislation, to address legitimate fears and concerns of the opposition party(ies)/group(s).
If we dig deeply enough, the scary opposition rhetoric resonates with their supporters for some reason.
Sometimes these can be addressed through education.
Sometimes there are ways of addressing concerns without harming the effect of proposed elections.
I tried to accomplish this with GENDA, the bill that I wrote in 2002, that did not pass both houses of the New York State legislature until January 2019, after a 'blue wave' election delivered a convincing Democratic majority to the NY State Senate, but no one in the Republican Party was willing to introduce an amendment even when I actually gave them the language.
When I drafted GENDA in 2002, the operative language for trans-inclusion in the human rights law was modeled on the NYC Human Rights Law as amended that year, and the then-recently enacted Rhode Island Human Rights Law.
While GENDA was pending in the legislature, eventually becoming an annual passage in the Democrat-controlled State Assembly, and either dying in committee, or failing to advance on a committee vote, in the Republican-controlled Senate (even when a few Democrats split from the Democratic caucus and formed the IDC (Independent Democratic Caucus) to support GOP leadership as a means toward "Power sharing." (The Blue Wave in the 2018 elections would have given Regular Democrats a majority of their own, plus most of the IDC got knocked off and did not get re-elected). Around 2011, the national scene for trans-inclusive human rights laws started seeing laws being enacted (first in Connecticut, and then in several other states. including Utah in 2015). that included specific language requiring trans folks to verify their "real" status as being trans. The fear among the opposition was not about trans women in women's restrooms or locker rooms, it was actually all about men pretending to be women - as outlined in a speech made by former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, in which he stated that if the law allowed it when he ws in high school, he'd have said, "Hey coach, I feel like a girl today," so he could use the girl's locker room, to ogle teen girls in various states of undress. The addition of so-called "show your papers" language (though there are many ways to establish one's bona fides) did not cause any problems in those states - and allowed those bills to move forward with Republican support.
Addressing legitimate concerns of the opposition requires the opposition to be open to negotiation. Unfortunately, it still requires all sides to participate in serious discussion.
Congress stopped doing this when the GQP adopted a scorched-earth policy against President Barack Obama, even when Obama (who is relatively conservative) introduced bills like the ACA, that were based on Republican laws (one prominent GOP think tank immediately reversing its own analysis when the ACA was introduced). In New York, I approached GOP leadership int eh Senate, with a view toward having a GOP Senator introduce an amendment to GENDA that would add that language - I even gave them the language and explained how it had worked in Connecticut and even Utah. But their reaction was more like the way Congress treated proposals coming from President Obama. In New York, the GQP Senators feared Conservative Party state chair Michael Long, who was profoundly anti-trans, and who threatened that any GOP senator who supported trans rights in any way would lose their Conservative Party line. SO, when GENDA did get passed in January 2019 with Democrats in control of the State Senate, the Republicans had lost their opportunity to help shape the legislation. There is so much legislation out there, in Congress and in state legislatures, that could benefit from the legislators on all sides actually hashing out what the real and legitimate concerns are and finding ways to address them. If legitimate concerns are being addressed, then it is not even a compromise, it's actually crafting a better bill. So many issues can be tackled this way, if only the parties are willing to be frank and honest. In today's polarized America, with the far right afraid of progressives, and vice versa, it might be time to see where there is actually common ground. It is not too late.
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