Maybe. I think it's overall a rightward shift, only in urban cores is it accelerating a leftward shift. To the extent that it is motivating marginal voters to vote (which I think it is), it is also benefitting the right. It's also breaking down ethnic voting patterns in a way that benefits the right, I think.
It is not motivating marginal voters to vote. The choice is between two nearly identical establishment candidates from two private clubs. The electorate is going the same way it's going in Europe, except in Europe other parties are legal (although marginalized through parliamentary methods.)
In the UK, for example, Reform has been consistently polling the same as the Conservatives and Labour added together., and all three of those added together only represent 2/3 of the electorate. In the US, that translates to 2/3 of people becoming non-voters.
Why that might look like a rightward shift in the US is because the Republicans don't fix their primaries (since the 90s), and their voters actually have an effect on who gets picked to run. Why it won't actually be a rightward shift is because Republicans ignore their platforms after being elected, and don't mind getting thrown out at the end of a term or two to work at the businesses they helped while in office.
Democrats simply don't believe in any sort of democracy anymore. They invest all their effort into yelling at black people and Hispanics, and raising as much money as they can from the worst people in the world. The rest of the time they spend attacking anybody running to the left of them as racist or Russian, while their media outlets simply ignore those people other than when they're helping promote the slander. That's whats pushing away "ethnic voting."
As a black person, I know when the voting season is here because I see a bunch of paid Democrats running around calling black people who criticize their party ethnic slurs and using the word "massa" a lot. Republicans don't do that. They don't rely on black people so just ignore us. Democrats rely on us, but will never do anything for us, so they use terror.
People in power just want total control of the narrative and they don't want you to find out the truth about anything. Look at Walz in MN--he's like the ultimate Jedi "nothing to see here" mind trick with his wholesome grandfatherly persona, which is furthest from the actual reality of who and what he is. They all just want to force you into their reality and they hate it when you don't go there.
The two party system exists because even in a multi party system (eg. those that exist in proportional representation governments) still end up as "In government" vs "In opposition"
Secondly, we employ "adversarial" systems for two branches of government (legislative and judicial) because it's a hell of a lot easier to spot flaws in ideas of people you are opposed to (as opposed to some European Judiciaries that have "inquisitorial" systems, where a judge investigates activity)
Very often in the proportional systems people opine that "grand coalitions" should form, with the two largest parties, although that loses a lot of the advantages of the adversarial system, and has a tendency to steam roll smaller interests in the country.
> Secondly, we employ "adversarial" systems for two branches of government (legislative and judicial) because it's a hell of a lot easier to spot flaws in ideas of people you are opposed to (as opposed to some European Judiciaries that have "inquisitorial" systems, where a judge investigates activity).
if that would be the case, why is the adversarial system not working in its current practice?
Also, i think the difference between the judicial systems of parlementary/european and the american system have more to do with the difference between civil and common law.
European goverments are really the legacy of the revolutionary french idea's of a civic state, in which citizens have duties to the state, and have rights being garantueed by the state. The state itself is being granted the authority to do this by its citizens through some process.
And there were a number of State supreme court elections that were alleged to have heavy monetary investment from a couple of billionaires that did not end up working in their favour.[1]
For that matter there is an Australian billionaire whose "investment" also does not appear to have worked in his favour [2]
I read somewhere that Rupert Murdoch was able to swing some elections a while ago in Australia and the UK. That was through his media ownership though.
There are other ways for money to impact politics beyond individual general elections. As well as funding community organizing and creating long-term propaganda, it's much easier to impact ballot initiatives (paid signature gathering works, for example, where paid canvassers don't.)
Public politics, and private company politics are very similar, although private company politics are less open to scrutiny.
The issue with the lottery is the need to ensure that the candidates both want the role, and are capable of doing it.
The latter, who is the right person to say "X is unqualified because.. " (and the Peter Principle suggests that just because someone was good at a lower job, eventually they're going to be put into a job they are unqualified for)
The theory with the current style that the person who puts themselves forward most definitely desires to win the job, and, as they rise up through their party system, have some level of competence, as adjudged by the people they have convinced to put them forward as a candidate.
Further, the adversarial nature is supposed to then mean that that person's opponents can call out the reasons that that person isn't suitable for the job.
Unfortunately, this ends up being a muck raking exercise, and the complaints might not amount to anything more than innuendo, further, there's no guarantee that they will even be heard (the supporters will provide evidence that the opponents themselves are not qualified to make any criticism)
Unfortunately a lot of elections these days, US or otherwise, tend not to end up being "This candidate is awesome, let's vote them in", but, instead "the incumbent is terrible, get someone, anyone, to replace them" - in the US Biden was voted in because Trump 1.0 was deemed a failure, and then Trump 2.0 was voted in because Biden was deemed a failure. Right now the Democrats appear to be on the rise again because Trump 2.0 and the Republicans are being deemed a failure. This isn't to diminish the wins by some actually good candidates though (although how good they are remains to be seen, and is a matter of... opinion).
Which is why parliamentary systems are so much more stable than first-past-the-post.
They let voters express their preferences, and leave building the coalitions up to the politicians. Instead of expecting voters to understand that their preferences are expressed during the primaries, and the general election is just to pick which coalition wins.
It is crazy that no one in America is promoting a Constitutional amendment to fix the basic governance.
You can't have first-past-the-post in a parliamentary system. But yeah, that's the one dependency they have, otherwise, those are independent. You can even have weird districtal systems that look parliamentary and use first-past-the-post.
Either way, majoritarian elections are a plague and must be avoided as much as possible.
Every political party ON THE PLANET has always had to manage internal factions, it doesn't matter if you're talking the Soviet Communist Party, the Democrats, the Republicans, The Tea party faction.
There's absolutely nothing new about parties having internal divisions. Even the fact that at the moment everything is so partisan is nothing new, history has shown that several times over the past century that politics has followed a penudulum that swings from partisan extremes, back to centrist moderates, and then back to the extremes.
