[Psudo]

This is a response to JJ's blog post of the same name.

To summarize, the blog post brings up several criticisms of the modern US political system, mostly centering around the political parties are operating on ideological purity rather than regional differences and changing circumstances, leading the House of Reps to operate more like the lower house in a Parliamentary system.

They make a strong argument for what's going on, but why it's happening receives less attention. I have a theory.

The influence of state governments has been systematically removed from the operation of the federal government. This results in reduced regional influence on political operation, a vacuum of power that demands to be filled by other political interests. Ideology seems to have taken it's place.

What do I mean state government's influence has been removed from the federal government? States used to be able to choose how they allocated their electoral votes for President, and many of them chose methods in which the state legislature had some influence. That is never the case anymore; the only choice these days is between winner-take-all and proportional allocation, neither of which gives the state governments any influence whatsoever. US Senators used to be elected by the state legislatures rather than the populous at large. Now they are elected by statewide popular vote.

When you remove state government's influence, of course you lose high-minded regional considerations in favor of the fiery populist rhetoric that motivates shallow, ideological voting. The only surprising thing is how slowly the change to populist ideological polarization occurred.