The genius of the American political system is that it allows the right to vote while withholding the power to decide anything of importance. It's better than a Ponzi scheme, because it's less obvious. As long as the economy lets everybody have a Subaru and a Palm Pilot, nobody will notice. But to make it look like more of a democracy than it is, you need an appearance of Participation, of hard-fought political battles in which the Common Man shapes the Destiny of the Country. In short, the rubes have to vote, to keep the system from being too obviously what it is, and too obviously what it isn't.
Elections are window-dressing for decisions that are going to be made anyway.
If you don't believe me, ask anybody in Wheeling. Now, I'm just a country boy, and don't understand higher ideas. But what it looks to me like is, the country isn't run by Washington and the gummint and the people and departments and elections. Really it's run by a vague cloud oozing out of Harvard, an ill-defined class consisting of academics, bureaucrats, the media, and their allies and prisoners. They control all the rest.