The term "holding up" is doing a lot of work here. The Republican party has an extremely enthusiastic voter base. Billionaire money might encourage the enthusiasm but in the end the voters turn out and pull levers. They are sincere in their voting.

The Democrats are a bit less enthusiastic, at least at the moment, but in the end it's not the millionaires who pull the levers. It's the rank and file.

It's hard to tell how different it would be if we could somehow get the money out of it. But I am wary of assuming that the voters would dramatically change their attitudes. The millionaires and billionaires tune the party's message to what the voters want. They get the spoils but they're also making their voters happy, assuming they win. If they didn't do that, they'd lose.

It's possible that the Democrats are more conspicuously failing to give their voters what they want when they win. But it's not obvious to me how they could do that. Most of the suggestions I hear are naive and impractical, and come down to "do the thing I want and many millions of others will see how great that is."

For election to work you would have to read [all of] the [not legally binding] election programs, ponder the offerings and make up your own mind.

You won't find a single person who does this.

Apparently everyone votes by a different mechanism. One that involves a lot of money.

Even if everyone was well informed and able to objectively make their own choices that are truly their own. You don't actually have to do anything you wrote in your election program.

> it's not the millionaires who pull the levers. It's the rank and file.

“People can vote whichever side they prefer, as long as their opinions are based on fake news.” It's difficult to talk about rank and file pulling the levers, when millionaires manufacture the news.