That seems like a silly question under the circumstances, given that the article that spawned this thread was titled "Our Unrepresentative Anti-Democracy."

I said Democrats and Republicans because that's what it comes down to.

There are two parties, and individual office holders are more or less irrelevant - the only thing that matters is who has the majority in whichever house of Congress you're talking about. If one party successfully captures the votes of small states, they'll have outsized influence. That's what happened.

It ain't pretty, but it's true.

People love to talk about third parties, "moderates," "bipartisanship" or "breaking the duopoly," but at the moment that's all bunk. The Green Party will never get their act together, and the Libertarians are handicapped by the laugh-out-loud absurdity of libertarianism.

If nature takes its course, white Evangelicals and the conservative movement will die out and collapse, forcing the GOP to actually try to govern on, you know, principles and positions. Or, as seems more and more likely, they go nuts and burn the country down rather than lose it.

Until then, we're stuck where we're at.