UFGN wrote:^^
As you said, the biggest problem in the US is the system itself. A healthy democracy of the size of the US should have dozens of political parties, with at least 10-15 big enough to challenge for seats in congress. Where is the Liberal Party? Where are the State Independence parties? Parties for constitutional change?
Technically, there are different political parties, it's just that they've been absorbed by the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. For Congressional Democrats, there's the New Democrats (modern liberal and centrist), Congressional Progressives, Blue Dogs (conservative Southern Dems), Blue Collar, and more focused caucuses such as the Medicare for All Caucus and the Expand Social Security Caucus. For Republicans, there's the Freedom Caucus (far-right, think Tea Party movement), Main Street Partnership (moderate), Tuesday Group (moderate), and Liberty Caucus (libertarian). With our system, people can fall into more than one caucus (or none at all), but that's the gist of it and how you can think of our two main parties as amalgamations of smaller parties. Doesn't mean I agree with the system, but it has its uses.
Think of it like here in the US, the caucasing/coalition forming happens before being elected to office, whereas in other democracies, it often occurs after getting into office.
At least with the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, the Electoral College has hope of changing in the medium term, with the winner of the national popular vote becoming president instead of having 3/5 most recent terms be Republican (Bush 2001-05, Bush 2005-09, Trump 2017-21) even though they lost the popular vote 4/5 times (Bush 2000, McCain 2008, Romney 2012, Trump 2016).
