American Democrat assuming conflict is present (5)
I believe the answer is:
award
'is present' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'american democrat assuming conflict' is the wordplay.
'american' becomes 'a' (common abbreviation - e.g. in organisation names).
'democrat' becomes 'd'.
'assuming' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'conflict' becomes 'war' (war is a kind of conflict).
'a'+'d'='ad'
'ad' going around 'war' is 'AWARD'.
(Other definitions for award that I've seen before include "Gong (informal)" , "Give, grant" , "Grant - prize" , "Present - prize" , "Prize in recognition of achievement" .)