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If the Harris campaign had been anywhere near as competent as its top operatives believed, they would have focused on this disconnect like Luke Skywalker on the Death Star.

If city government then decided to confront the Trump administration directly on the issue, it would have a body of representative citizens already staking out the position that elected leaders were defending.

It would be even better if multiple jurisdictions engaged in a similar process at the same time — and believe it or not, something similar happened more than 40 years ago.

Although it doesn't engage participants in back-and-forth discussions with one another, it does include methods for exposing people to different arguments and discovering if they significantly change people's views.

If the world had paid attention to public interest polling, we might have avoided the worst dangers of the climate crisis, decided not to invade Iraq and done a better job persuading Americans that government can work.