The problem is that our federal legislative system is heavily tilted in favor of Republicans despite them being firmly a minority party. This is most apparent in the Senate, but gerrymandering gives them an edge in the House too.
So when you're talking about consensus, the country has it. There's consensus on immigration, gun control, and abortion. It's just that Republicans prevent us from acting on it.
Consensus doesn’t just mean 51%. It means general agreement. If you have 100 people in a room, 51 people are in favor of something and the other 49 are not, is that your “consensus”? Prior to the US each of the states were their own sovereign entities. Why enter the US (or stay in it) if you are going to be ruled against your will? The states agreed to give up some of their power and joined under the explicit conditions of the senate that they would have an equal say.
A majority of Americans support the right to choose [1] (61%), a path to amnesty for undocumented persons [2] (60%), restrictions on firearm purchase and ownership [3] (> 64%), moving off of fossil fuels and treating climate change like the threat it is [4] (76%), a wealth tax on people with a net worth of over $50m [5] (56%), the expanded voting rights in HR 1 [6] (>61%), etc. etc. etc.
These are big majorities, and I'd wager most Americans don't think this stuff is broadly popular.
The key word here is "sufficient consensus." Your judgement of sufficiency is a personal opinion.
I could, for example, define "sufficient consensus" as requiring that all laws require a 90% supermajority in the Senate. Or I could reduce this to 50% of the Senate. Alternatively I could reform Congress so that lawmaking requires voting totals representing 50% of the population.
Each of these is one possible version of "sufficient consensus", and still none of them actually matches the version we actually have. What is clear is that the sclerotic nature of today's Congress is problematic, and it's doing a great deal to undermine faith in our democratic system.
It might be obvious, but I feel like it's lost due to partisan motivated reasoning. eg. when your preferred party doesn't control the senate, then the filibusterer is an important part part of democracy that forces widespread consensus, but when your party does control the senate the filibusterer is a undemocratic tactic used by the minority to obstruct the majority.
Consider, for example, how the FDA operates. They have a broad mandate to keep food clean and drugs safe. They don't have an explicit mandate of "you must only regulate tylenol and aspirin, we need to pass a law for new drugs each time they come up."
This ruling finds the EPA, who has the mandate to keep pollutants out of the air, can't determine that CO2 is a pollutant. Why is that? The 2016 clean air act specifically gave them the power to regulate air pollutants.
The only answer is political activism. There is no difference between the FDA's broad mandate and the EPA's broad mandate.
I recommend reading the dissent on this case. It makes it absolutely clear that this is an EPA power. The conservatives couldn't get new laws passed repealing the EPA, so instead they packed the court with political activists so they could make law from the bench.
The rise of China is testing and will continue to test this assumption. The Chinese government does not require consensus. It can build 40,000 kilometers of high speed rail in just a few years. It can pull hundreds of millions from poverty. It can shut down entire companies and industries overnight (e.g. private school tutoring), jail corrupt corporate executives, and in general coerce compliance to any law.
Do you know how many school teachers in China must buy supplies for their students with their own money? Zero.
Do you know how many Chinese ambassadorships are left vacant because of political bickering? Zero.
I am not a shill for the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, or the ideology of the Chinese political system, but I increasingly am a shill for the ruthless efficiency of the Chinese government.
China is one extreme. The other extreme is the United States, which isn't able to accomplish anything, good or bad. All the US does anymore is renaming post offices, mailing social security checks, funding the army, and tax stuff. Tax cuts, tax credits, tax rebates, tax incentives.
China may well supersede the United States in the future, despite its treatment of minorities.
They also can't enforce building codes leading to fires that kill a lot of people, have no real food safety and dramatically impinge on any sense of individual rights.
