zlacker

To expand on your second point, if the other side is an unthinkable evil, then the leaders of your side can be as corrupt as they want and betray as many party ideals as they like, because at least they aren't the unthinkable evil. Because in the US you don't get to vote for anyone, you only get to pick who you vote against. Otherwise you are throwing away your vote and letting the unthinkable win. And in the vast majority of voting districts even that doesn't really matter because they aren't swing states.

Ranked voting would solve this issue. I have never read any critique of it that I found convincing. It exists at state and municipal levels. But until the big states switch it won't change the problem. If swing states adopted it, along with proportional allocation of electoral votes (a couple states do this now) it would definitely change strategies for the better.

The effect is that you can't be the most extreme version of your party and ignore moderates in the hope there are more people that hate the other corrupt extremist, because the moderate candidates will get ranked higher than you by both sides of the artificial duopoly.

In that world, the sensational nature of the media works to uncover sneaky extremists so you can rank all the boring candidates higher, or least higher than the extremist you don't secretly agree with. Either way the boring candidates win.

Someone once wrote that the best kings produce the fewest pages in history books.

>>galang+(OP)
Ranked voting will help, but it's a stretch to day it will solve it. There's still the issue of money/publicity and party loyaty/identity. If you don't have the money for the publicity, many people won't even know who you are. You'll still have people who use one of the two main parties as part of their identity and won't entertain the thought of outside candidates. Politics has become a religion to many.

>>giantg+23
I have family friends and neighbors who subscribe to both of the state religions. None of them ever start their evangelizing by telling me what their party stands for. It is always about what they stand against. I think the religious fervor is primarily a side effect of fear of extremism they don't like, instead of the extremism that doesn't really effect them. If they can rank their cuddly extremist first then the moderates whose name they only vaguely recognize in some random order based on what they think they might have read, or some stereotype based off the name itself, then the unthinkable evil dead last, they will still serve to moderate things, just via the central limit theorem.

Edit: there will be a fortune ready for the person that has a generative model in hand to let candidates change their name to something minimally scary.

>>galang+(OP)
It is amazing to vote in Ireland where it isn't rare for a candidate that nobody loves but most people can at least somewhat tolerate wins because of 2nd or 3rd preference votes.

>>galang+H4
The problem with that theory is that parties still hold primaries. Primaries have the most extremist representation since those are the people who are most motivated to vote. This is a problem when voter turnout for primaries is something like 15-20%

>>giantg+8f
If via some magic, the electoral system changed as I described despite those who won in the current system being in power, then the primary candidates would lose against moderate independents hardly anyone knew except for the reasons described. Except that the parties would forsee that and run different candidates using ranked voting in the primaries as well. Again, that is if somehow the changes could ever be made. Where it has happened it has often happened via referendum, and even then, it has been reversed on multiple occasions as well. I think Seattle just selected for local elections? It will be interesting to see how that goes.