A really long article that’s still worth a read:

https://www.weekendreading.net/p/how-trump-won

«This is the one-two punch that knocked out Harris’s chances this year: disaffection with Democrats, combined with incredulity at the idea that Trump might actually implement the worst parts of the MAGA agenda.»

His conclusion:

«When we use the wrong tools, we might not just fail to diagnose an illness – we might misdiagnose it, and prescribe a treatment that is actively harmful to the patient. When Flatland analysts argue that America “moved right,” the prescription tends to be that Democrats should also move right, or at least play nice with Trump to avoid alienating the Americans who supposedly granted him a decisive mandate. The same prescription will be dispensed to civil society and the media.

But that diagnosis completely misses the life-threatening illness America is really struggling with: a billionaire-captured system that doesn’t work for most people, and justifiable disaffection and anger at this system. Americans are fed up, and people are perpetually in the mood to throw the bums out, whoever the bums in charge are. But with only two parties to realistically choose from – plus a democratically illegitimate Electoral College that makes most Americans’ presidential votes all but irrelevant – all of these “change elections” add up to little more than a seesaw that most Americans don’t want to ride in the first place.

And so, nearly 250 years after putting forth the then-revolutionary aspiration for governments “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” we deploy election procedures that can claim no more legitimacy than the seething resignation of the governed.»

So. I disagree with the (implied?) statement that the problem is the two-party system (there’s an earlier post about that), but I think the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact plus ranked-choice voting would go a very long way to addressing the current illness.

Plus re-apportioning the House of Representatives.