> will always boil down to lobbying and money in politics.

And here you take the easy way out. Just blame third parties. You should keep asking why to find the real cause.

My personal take, as someone who is European but has lived in the US, Texas metro areas specifically, is that first past the post elections sow division.

Choices are limited, political activity is neutered, and extremism builds until it finds an outlet through either of the two possible political choices. Taking over that side entirely.

Political systems needs vents for frustration, and the US system does not have that.

Which finally leads to the people.

The only ones that could cause change needed to reform their representation in the political system is the people.

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joe_mamba 39 minutes ago | parent [-]

>Political systems needs vents for frustration, and the US system does not have that.

Out of curiosity since you made this claim and said you're european, where are the EU vents of frustration that the US lacks?

Because I see it differently. Trump IS the frustration vent itself but people refuse to acknowledge this and look for something else to blame as if people shouldn't be allowed to use their vote for a crazy candidate as a vent of frustration, and the frustration vent should be a virtually inexistent token piece.

	▲	disgruntledphd2 25 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> Out of curiosity since you made this claim and said you're european, where are the EU vents of frustration that the US lacks? Proportional representation definitely helps here. You could look at the UK as a good counter-example, where the UKIP (a Brexit supporting party) got like 15% of the votes in the 2015 election, and no seats. Where people see that voting doesn't change anything, they'll look for some other way to effect change. That being said, PR doesn't really appear to be working that well. I (personally) think that a lot of the issues relate to free flows of capital across the world, which leads businesses to be set up in areas of cheap labour, which makes people in developed countries angry and more likely to vote for anyone who'll promise to fix it (regardless of how insane their ideas are). But it's complicated, monocausal explanations are typically deceptive.