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Americans want a better political power structure.
Lobbying is pervasive inside a two-party system
Lobbying is a fascinating part of any democracy, and the United States is a lobbying outlier among modern democracies in several ways. Creating rules to limit the power of already-powerful interests is an old agenda, with more than a century of instructive history in the US.
Most importantly, our two-party system creates huge incentives for the worst features of intense lobbying. Lobbyists and entrenched parties both benefit from career politicians: people who permanently occupy powerful positions are people who can consistently fundraise from wealthy donors: good for lobbyists, good for the party, bad for average Americans.
We want businesses to be able to present their case before the government: there should be a voice in Washington warning against excessive regulation and looking for ways to work together on policy solutions. However, when lobbyists only need to develop a relationship with a handful of individuals, it is easy to exert extraordinary influence on what makes it onto the Congress floor, and what doesn't.
There are many policies that have broad support from Americans of all political backgrounds. A good example is an overhaul of the tax code to simplify it for most of us and remove loopholes. However, lobbyists have sufficient power to shut down any bill seeking to do so (1). Furthermore, lobbyists are able to add favorable provisions to every bill that does pass, since they are so entrenched in the political process (2).
While it is impossible to completely remove the additional influence that comes with wealth and power, it is easy to improve our political system so that the interests of the average American are better represented in our government. It is easy to restore competition to our gridlocked legislative body so that the best ideas for everyone are most likely to rise to the top.
It is vital to fix the deeply unpopular political influence system we currently have. Americans distrust and disengage from their government because they feel, correctly, that the machinery of the government isn't accountable to them. The more Americans cynically disengage from their role in policing the government, the easier it is for monied interests to have their way, which makes government even less accountable to Americans. We have to exit this vicious cycle.
Career politicians are everywhere
Most Americans want politicians like the ancient Roman general Cincinnatus: willing to fight for their country when called upon, but equally ready to give up that power when their calling is fulfilled. This is why each party tries desperately to paint the other as the corrupt Washington insiders. The reality, though, is that while career politicians are bad at remembering their constituents, they are good at increasing the power in our two-party system, and good for the people who can fund the two-party system.
The root of this problem is a lack of competition in elections: 90% (1) of Congressional districts are not competitive, and many (2) local offices run completely unopposed. In this sort of environment, the dominant party has no competition and is completely responsible for policing itself: a classic case of the fox guarding the henhouse. As Americans, we know that the best way to promote good ideas and efficiency is robust competition, and a fully sorted two-party system simply will not provide it.
Furthermore, wealthy donors love career politicians, because they can establish a working relationship with a single individual and then benefit from that relationship indefinitely. It would be much more difficult to control American policy if there were a variety of factions, representing issues that resonate with real, working Americans. In this case, the landscape of policy issues would be responsive to the people, instead of a handful of party elites, and much more difficult to sway with campaign donations.
Deep down, Americans know this, and they have become distrustful of party leadership, even among their own team. Americans want checks and compromises (3) among their representatives, so that every piece of legislation receives enough scrutiny to be able to get it right.
American democracy is moving in the wrong direction
There are several international institutions that grade democracies around the world (1)(2). These are in agreement that American democracy is in decline: we are losing faith in our core democratic institutions (3) and more likely than ever to think that the individuals in government are not exemplary, and they do not have our best interests at heart (4). We know that each party courts wealthy donors and corporate executive fundraising instead of listening to actual voters (5). We know that the media we consume is heavily partisan (6), and our only hope comes from our certainty that our party is at least better than the other side.
This erosion of democracy is real and accelerating as we entrench more and more rigidly behind our party's line. We see the other side as the enemy to be defeated, instead of a neighbor to persuade. All of these problems can be alleviated by having more voices at the table, who are incentivized to have real discussions with one another, instead of talking over each other to mobilize their bases.
Local and state elections receive little attention
For nearly 200 years, Americans saw more importance in local and state elections than federal elections. Before the end of the 20th century, parties were not truly nationalized, which allowed for overlapping ideology and flexible federal coalitions. Most federal representatives campaigned for re-election on their record of how many federal dollars they were able to bring back "to the good people at home" (1).
This fluid national party identity and dominance of regional loyalty made space for not only conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats, but also liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats (2). This created federal stability from the overlapping national coalitions and compromise-happy legislators: the political pendulum couldn't swing too far from center, because bills had to be broadly popular among various factions.
In stark contrast, today we have highly nationalized, top-down party power. Most local government campaigns on the national party platform (regardless of what local issues might be), and voters follow that trend: most Americans choose a national party and vote accordingly down the ticket (3). This means that local issues and candidates get precious little attention from voters, and local government suffers as a result. Many local races are run completely unopposed (4), which is a catastrophic failure of the natural balance of competition in our democracy.
Neither of the two systems I've described is ideal. In fact, in 1950s America, political scientists were worried that national parties were too similar, rendering Americans' voting choices irrelevant (5). There was a highly selfish component to federal government, where bringing federal dollars home was all voters cared about. In contrast, Americans today buy into the big picture of a national party agenda, and they are willing to vote even against their own interests in order to advance the party's goals (6). Fortunately, a free market solution of more choices in political ideas can give us all the advantages of both eras of politics and fix all of their shortcomings.
Parties are accused of being their most fringe elements
In our national two-party system, each party claims to represent the "true majority" of Americans. Aside from being a disaster that fulfills James Madison's greatest fears (1), this self-image of the parties incentivizes them to create hatred and contempt for the other side. The messaging literally boils down to "we represent the true spirit and legacy of the United States, and those others aren't really true-blooded Americans: they're evil or at least horribly misinformed."
Republicans are incentivized to tell voters that all Democrats are abortion-loving, welfare-abusing, and America-hating. Democrats are incentivized to tell voters that all Republicans are corporate-loving, minority-persecuting, and pro-massacre. Because party coalitions are so broad, you can always find someone somewhere affiliated with the party who is behaving like one of those labels. This approach is good at generating outrage against the other party and mobilizing the base, but it is terrible at producing good governance.
As long as party propaganda takes advantage of the us-them hardwiring in our brains, the stakes of every election will feel impossibly high and our respect for one another will continue to decline. We need a system that is willing to talk to others on their own terms and is incentivized look for common ground instead of just division.
Americans have little trust in Congressional ethics
Questions about Congressional ethics cut across party lines. Although each of our preferred news outlets tries to broadcast the immoral actions of the other side and bury our own side's immorality, Americans have an accurate sense that representatives of both sides are often incentivized to work against their constituents' interests.
Because the parties both suffer from this problem, they have no reason to fix it. Decreasing the power of lobbying, or guaranteeing that representatives don't trade stocks on insider information, or reducing the power of political non-profit organizations, or putting limits on executive authority are all things that most Americans want. But why would either party's leadership try to implement them? All of those initiatives would anger the party's fundraising base, and it wouldn't persuade voters on the other team to change their ballot.
We can create a system that is designed to incentivize better behavior for our representatives. We have people who are passionate and patriotic in office, but we frequently ask them to choose some value ahead of keeping their own job. Why should we settle for a system that constantly demands this sort of sacrifice to keep functioning? We can just make a better system: one that restores the confidence of Americans in the ethical conduct of their government.
Voters are isolated in their own echo chambers
Listening to the news can be exhausting. Most news outlets thrive on outrage. If you're not furious at the other side after listening to the news, then they've failed to mobilize you to vote against them. Holding the ideals of half of the country together one umbrella is enormously difficult--probably impossible most of the time. Instead, it is much more useful to ensure that your audience would never consider voting for the other side.
This incentivizes news to focus on emotionally charged stories and cherry-pick the facts that make the other side look as bad as possible. We all know that the stories we read are nakedly biased one way or the other; it's simply business as normal for media coverage. As a result, most of us rarely hear a more nuanced view of any given story.
The two party system benefits strongly from poorly informed voters. They don't want you to be aware of local issues, or local abuses of power from the dominant party. They want you to be allied to one team, and to stay there loyally forever. This is unworkable in a democracy. We need citizens who can process a problem from a variety of perspectives and vote in a rational way. All of the talk chastising voters for not listening to the other side or getting to know them is pointless: we just need a system that creates a genuine marketplace of ideas. If productive political discourse were out there, we would listen to it.
Elections demand too little from American voters
How do you fill out your ballot? How far ahead of the election do you know what color your ballot will be? In this era of toxic politics, politicians know that mobilizing their base to vote is far more impactful than persuading voters on policy.
If your vote was easy then it was wasted. If the correct choice seems obvious to you, the election underutilized your political intuition. If our political system were well-calibrated, all 250 million US voters would agonize over their electoral choices, and carefully express their political conclusions in a voting method that can capture the range of their feelings. This would take advantage of the unique perspectives we each possess and integrate them like a neural network into the best decisions. Our current method is catastrophically far away from this ideal.
Instead of presenting voters with the nuance of diverse opinions to persuade people who are undecided, parties focus on enraging their base enough to generate better turnout that the other team. What a terrible waste of democratic potential!
Party fundraising priorities dictate party decisions
Most importantly, our two-party system creates huge incentives for the worst features of intense lobbying. Lobbyists and entrenched parties both benefit from career politicians: people who permanently occupy powerful positions are people who can consistently fundraise from wealthy donors: good for lobbyists, good for the party, bad for average Americans.
We want businesses to be able to present their case before the government: there should be a voice in Washington warning against excessive regulation and looking for ways to work together on policy solutions. However, when lobbyists only need to develop a relationship with a handful of individuals, it is easy to exert extraordinary influence on what makes it onto the Congress floor, and what doesn't.
There are many policies that have broad support from Americans of all political backgrounds. A good example is an overhaul of the tax code to simplify it for most of us and remove loopholes. However, lobbyists have sufficient power to shut down any bill seeking to do so (1). Furthermore, lobbyists are able to add favorable provisions to every bill that does pass, since they are so entrenched in the political process (2).
While it is impossible to completely remove the additional influence that comes with wealth and power, it is easy to improve our political system so that the interests of the average American are better represented in our government. It is easy to restore competition to our gridlocked legislative body so that the best ideas for everyone are most likely to rise to the top.
It is vital to fix the deeply unpopular political influence system we currently have. Americans distrust and disengage from their government because they feel, correctly, that the machinery of the government isn't accountable to them. The more Americans cynically disengage from their role in policing the government, the easier it is for monied interests to have their way, which makes government even less accountable to Americans. We have to exit this vicious cycle.
Elections focus on celebrity instead of policy
What makes Americans go out and vote? In our current system, the most energizing motive to vote is hatred of the opposite team's presidential candidate. National media wants to be relevant to every American viewer, which means it focuses on federal races and supercharges the contempt its viewers feel for the person at the top of the ticket.
This is a terrible way to run a democracy, especially under the United States Constitution, which relies on factionalization among a variety of interests to create checks and balances. In our present system, the Founders would be horrified to see how close we are to electing a 4-year king, and how much it is eroding the system they put in place.
In order to compete with the media that we all have at our fingertips, news networks have needed to become outrage machines. The old style of fact-based broad-appeal news stories was too boring to survive in our hyper-digital world (1), and the consequence is extreme political polarization. We click and share when we feel disgusted by the other side; not when we find a nuanced and responsible treatment of an important topic.
Fortunately, we can fix the problem: we need a marketplace of ideas, where every news source is incentivized to work across party lines in alliances for some issues, and to disagree with the same factions on other issues. This gray area produces uncertainty that forces voters to know the facts of the case to feel informed. If we just support the heroes at the top of the ticket, we're missing the most impactful parts of elections in local, policy-heavy races.
Parties lose credibility from perpetual disagreement
The two parties are so entrenched in opposition to one another, that it's no longer noteworthy when they disagree. Was anyone surprised when Democrats embraced free trade after Trump declared his love for tariffs? Or that Republicans respected Putin's impetuousness after Democrats condemned his authoritarianism? The two parties must be opposed on every issue, so there's nothing meaningful to learn from the disagreement.
In a binary political power structure, there is only one axis of contention: us against them. In a system that allows for more diverse perspectives, more nuanced views with shifting alliances and responsive prioritization can thrive. In this environment, parties would be incentivized to acquaint their voters with the facts, and to attempt to persuade them of the correctness of their stance.
Government whiplash ruins our international image
Regardless of your position within the two parties, it is clear to all of us how bad of an international partner the United States has become in the last generation. Executive moderation used to be a hallmark of the American system, and it was absolutely vital to international cooperation. Seeing our government whip back and forth between extremely polarized visions creates uncertainty that ruins our bargaining position with other countries.
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