General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: How utterly @#$%ed up is it that two-thirds [View all]MisterP
(23,730 posts)non-extortionate education, less speculation, high-speed rail, single payer
the parties aren't designed to get votes in exchange for policies, they're set up to ensure that as little gets passed as possible--they're not even there to "win" any more, since party and candidates get beaucoups bucks even if they lose--there's always next cycle, and they usually don't have primaries to worry about--the DNC will notoriously give millions to RETIRING MCs because they know the people who'd normally complain would just blame some imaginary abstentionist campaign or mysteriously panic about a left-wing takeover (like, this is LITERALLY how they run elections in banana republics, but at least there you get 80K box lunches and 50K sodas for 15K "nonpartisan pro-democracy protesters" who were bussed in for free by the local neofascists and the local duopoly)
maybe they're not even primarily intended to generate policy for the donors!