These days, just 2% of Americans trust that our elections work how they’re supposed to. Congress has an approval rating of 20%. Our leaders are locked in partisan warfare and they aren’t fixing anything. And we're angry. We're angry at the system, at each other. Our country's getting poorer, sicker, more divided and our families are paying the price.
We don’t even talk to each other anymore! America’s political system has been hijacked to ensure those with power keep it. And for the rest of us? Well, it’s not so good.
America’s two major political parties. In 2019, both major parties publicly threatened to blacklist candidates and contractors who veered from the party lines. They control the money, the debates, the primaries, they even draw their own voting districts.
A full 61% of Americans want another option, but any third party or independent who runs is seen as a “spoiler.” So year after year, we choose between the lesser of two evils… Democrats. Republicans. Republicans. Democrats. In any other environment, a new competitor would swoop in to better serve their constituency — You hate your cable company? Here comes streaming — but the two parties have rigged the system to block competition.
But it gets worse... In 86% of House races, we now know which party will win the general election before it even starts.
但是情况变得更糟了……在86％的众议院竞选中，我们在大选开始之前就能知道哪一个政党会赢得大选。
That means all of the competition is in the primaries. Where as few as 14% of voters participate. And primary voters tend to be more partisan than those who vote in the general election. So the most partisan candidates win the primary, they’re virtually guaranteed to win the general, so you can guess what happens next.
For the first time since the Great Depression, life expectancy in the U.S. is actually going DOWN, while it goes up in the rest of the world. We were once ranked top in the world for education. We’ve fallen to 27th. We can’t afford life-saving prescriptions, and medical bills are forcing families into bankruptcy. Almost HALF of American families can’t even afford basic necessities like rent and food.