One danger with "factually proven issues" is cherry-picking facts or otherwise taking them from context. For example, there might be stats on which a president sucked for most of his term, but in the last few months those stats were decent (or vice versa); and then supporters of the president might shout those last few months' stats from the rooftops, and then do polls that show that supporters know but opponents don't know about those last few months' stats, and gleefully report, "Gosh, well, we're trying to reason with our opponents, but unfortunately they're just so ignorant, what can we do..."

Another danger is people playing with definitions. A third is people claiming things to be "facts" based on cherry-picked studies (and possibly some dubious interpretations thereof).

Progress can be made, but I think it requires a sophisticated approach. Paying attention to all the above dimensions, and probably to the motives of the people involved.

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