Have You Been Asleep Under A Rock For The Past 45 Years?

In a winner take all system like ours, Duverger's Law states that it will end up with two major parties. This is because potential third parties are subsumed under the umbrella of one or the other major parties. Parliamentary systems avoid this by having the legislature reflect the election results proportionally. Imagine how Congress would look if it had a few Libertarians and Greens, corresponding to the results those parties had in the last election. In fact, third parties do well in parliamentary systems because rather than "throwing your vote away," you can vote for your preferred candidate with the expectation that they could actually be elected to office. With a parliamentary system, we might have Mike Johnson or Hakeem Jeffries as Prime Minister, but only if they were successful in crafting a coalition with one or more smaller parties.

I don't want to give the impression that I necessarily support parliamentary systems, as many of them are a mess. The Dutch government just fell because their fragile coalition fell apart, so they have a caretaker government until they can hold new elections. I lost count of how many elections Israel had until the current government was installed. Those also only give third parties a chance if they're elected at-large instead of by district, and the US is much too big and regionally diverse for that to work.

Ranked choice voting can help, but it can result in a candidate no one is enthusiastic about. My suggestion would be to enlarge Congress to the point where each district has an equal number of people. If that means we have 2000 House members, so be it. To make it even larger, instead of winner take all, each district could have three representatives. For example, if a district is 55% Republican and 45% Democratic, it could end up with two Republicans and one Democrat, unlike our current system where the Democrats from that district have no representation at all.

And yes, I agree with you. The two nominees in each election were there because their respective voters supported them over everyone else. That doesn't mean the party bigwigs have no say, but if they had complete control, Trump would never have been nominated in 2016.

Keep in mind that the majority of Americans don't vote. When people are asked why they don't vote, a major reason that keeps coming up is that they don't like either candidate. I think that's really stupid, we should always vote for the lesser evil, but it does mean that most Americans didn't want Trump, Biden, Harris, or Clinton to be president. And I'm including people who did vote, since so many people who voted Democrat in all three elections did so because Trump was worse, not because they liked the Democrats.

While it's true..."The majority is never right", few wish to recognize that the minority is only out for themselves. With their excuse being that they are so much smarter.

Which is worse though?🤷🏻‍♂

At least the majority has a goal pointing to somewhere, other than themselves, right or wrong.

I too often confuse the Constitution with an episode of American Dad. Happens after two Lemsips. Hehehe!

For the last election, DJT received a plurality of the votes, not a majority (finishing under 50%).

So in other words we have been spoiled for choice for candidates the last few years