It's the dynamic that structured how the US dealt with all these other groups. But where you need to spend most of your time is up on the top deck, guiding the ship, saying this is the direction we want to go. And when the party loses importance as it did in the '60s, '70s, '80s, and '90s and we're driven by the cult of personality that sometimes surrounds politics, we lose a little of that thing that is distinctively American, that holds our factions together. We have political advertising. We have an enormous amount of fundraising.
Elections are slick.
In some ways this helps the public, because it means that candidates are going to be thinking about issues that are on people's minds. But it also looks pre-packaged. And it seems not quite real.