The two-party duopoly has choked the democracy out of America's political institutions.
Both the Democrats and Republicans do remarkably little in the areas of political education or formulating actual policy; instead, they are practically singularly devoted to the task of filling offices such that the parties are
"composed of an inner circle of office-holding + office-seeking cadres together with their personal supporters + a limited number of professional party workers."
Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam paints a dark and paradoxical picture of the nature of participation in the Democratic and Republican Parties through the twentieth century.
While the finances + concomitant professionalization of political organizations skyrocketed to create a thriving "business of politics" in America, actual political engagement through such activities as volunteering in election campaigns
and attending political meetings + campaign rallies has descended to measurable all-time lows.
Notwithstanding the manifold indicia of increasing voter apathy + citizen disengagement that has characterized the era of two-party rule in the United States,
the two parties have managed to embed themselves into the system's very fabric--
not just via legislation that has made it virtually impossible for the duopoly to face serious challenges from third parties and independent candidates, but in the system's self-image as expressed in the Supreme Court's constitutional jurisprudence.
In 1997, the Supreme Court, by a 6-3 majority, ruled that a state law prohibiting candidates from appearing on the ballot on more than one party line--an example of "antifusion" legislation, which has, in conjunction with other factors,
effectively precluded third parties from playing a meaningful role in the electoral system--passed muster under the Constitution.
In so doing, the Court adopted the two-party doctrine hook, line, and sinker, finding that states may "favor the traditional two-party system" because "American politics has been, for the most part, organized around two parties since the time of Andrew Jackson"
and the two-party system promotes "political stability".
---Timmons vs. Twin Cities Area New Party, 520 U.S. 351 (1997)
---Timmons vs. Twin Cities Area New Party, 520 U.S. 351 (1997)
The court's reasoning , which is as much conclusory as it is based on bad history, thereby enshrines the duopoly of parties as a function of constitutional law + as a consequence, an irremovable feature of the political system-
even though political parties, much less the concept of an electoral system dominated by two parties, have no textual basis in the Constitution.
But if the two-party system is an interloper in our republic, it is one that has achieved constitutionally protected status, thanks to the six justices of the Supreme Court comprising the Timmons majority.
From "What Happened To Bernie Sanders", by Jared H. Beck, Esq., published by Hot Books 
