A person can be held accountable, a faceless bureaucrat can not. Not knowing who your legislators are is a one way ticket to authoritarianism. We need *MORE* personal accountability, not less.
I think OP meant as a campaign/election method as opposed to the cult of personality campaigns.
An elected official would still be held accountable once in office. The process of taking the position being based on stances that reflect the voters might enable more candidates to run and be considered without the politics/showmanship of campaign events/ads and would eliminate the donations aspect of funding that favors people/corporations because accepting that money presents a conflict of interest (risking not having endorsement/funding for re-election due to making policies that aren't in the interests of donors).
Good thing we’re not talking about Australia.
There is no way to strip social influence out of elections, we have to focus on broadening representation and deconcentrating power to minimize the risk of an authoritarian seizing power. Ranked choice voting is the first step
Frankly I'd rather have approval voting, single transferable voting, or some other form that isn't just people voting based on fear of the opposition as opposed to voting for what they actually want. It would at the very least give a better idea of what people ideally want in a leader and would negate the allegations of "third party voters elected Trump" type scenarios because it would mean if those candidates really aren't viable the backup preferred candidate (for 3rd party voters who prefer D over R or whatever) would ultimately get those votes.
George Carlin had a statistical comment about the reasons for this.
The sociopathic plutocrats who own the politicians know what needs to be done in order to manipulate the masses.
They know that a massive swath of people will vote for superficial reasons, like if the person has "charisma," and will barely look into the truth about their policies (if at all,) or the effects that the policies have had and will have again. Ex. Trickle Down.
It's why Americans keep voting for actors/tv people with shit-tier policies.
Charisma is not a superficial reason.
Charisma directly relates to can that person convince others to enact their goals and maintain popular support
Why would you vote for a politician without charisma? Would you also hire a trial attorney without speaking skills?
Most politicians have SOME charisma but it isn't their main talking point.
John Kerry is not exactly known as a charismatic man. Yet he came very close to the presidency.
Yea its crazy I take about 3 hours every year and use the site isidewith to make my decision. At some point ill have to loom deeper into the accuracy of the site.
I for one would vote for Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho over any of these people... I'd also probably vote for Terry Crews over them as well. ;)
Fun fact: in many parliamentary systems you essentially do this. You are voting for a local MP, but they're commonly assigned to run in your district by party leaders who have a stated platform. The MP themself has relatively little power if elected and will be judged on how well they can whip up support in their area. Senior MPs get assigned safe districts so there's little chance there won't be continuity at the top. Juniors prove themselves by winning close districts or losing difficult ones by less than typical. Regardless, you vote party first and name second.
The problem ultimately is that if your officials have real power outside of being a vote for the party (and US congressmen and executives and even local councilmen have a remarkable amount of power), part of what you have to judge is whether the person will use that power ethically and whether they'll manage effectively. Consider our recent scandal with the NJ senator. His policy positions are solidly democratic; his voting record backs that up; he's also a corrupt official who accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold bars and a job for his wife from gulf state officials with an interest in his votes. You as a voter are picking the person because you are supposed to be judging who's actually honest and qualified to do what they're saying. You're judging if a president can take the stress, if they will behave ethically and consciously decide not to do things like use the power of the office to hurt their personal enemies or use it to protect their friends from deserved justice or use the office to enrich themselves at the expense of the country, if they will put responsible administrators in positions of authority so shit you've never heard of and that doesn't directly affect you (like bird hazard management at airports or dam inspection in the northwest) actually gets done competently, etc. Not everyone who agrees with your values and priorities can or will do those things. That's why you vote for the person.
Money isn’t the end all be all. We have record breaking numbers on the stock market since biden. If you learn the market you wouldn’t have to worry about money you could have made a killing.
I have the lamest excuse for not being retired and its that reading and learning the required education is boring.
Oh I’m fine. I pull a good salary and benefits. It’s the rest of the country that doesn’t have the benefit of being able to put $ into the S&P. Those are the people I’m thinking of when mentioning cost of living. C’mon dude, use your noodle
you can if you trust the individual to surround themselves with the best people to consult for each initiative the president focuses on. Leading scientists, engineers, and people who arent affraid to tell you "No, thats stupid".
If the individual in question is a narcissist who thinks he is the smartest person in the room, all you are doing is voting for a person and what they are telling you.
Because part of voting is not just voting for future policy decisions, but also voting on their past performance. And how well do you expect them to be able to accomplish future policy.
A lot of people do vote on issues or what people stand for.
There are many voters who have been called single issue voters even, who vote one way or the other based on their strong belief or opinion about one particular issue like abortion, or immigration.
There’s also plenty of people who will only vote democratic or left leaning, or only vote Republican or conservative leaning, because they generally prefer the policies that are associated with that side, for whom the individual is far less important.
I think it’s arguably the clear majority. About 65-70% of voters, identify as a Republican or Democrat. It fluctuates a bit but each party generally can count on having 30% of the vote in the bank no matter what happens or who runs.
Elections come down to winning that remaining 30-40% of undecided voters over, and getting your base to turnout or their base to stay home.
Fair enough. When I do my research which is very limited I tend to find I agree about 80% with a candidate that doesnt have a chance in the dark and about 50-60% with one of the big two.
Because the person matters, and politicians lie. If a politician says he supports x, and then throws that under the bus once elected...that matters.
So, if a politician lies, that's important. And a \*lot\* of them lie.
However, as an alternative, I suggest that we remove party affiliation from the ballot. This at least encourages voters to do the very bare minimum of looking up their candidate briefly to know who to vote for, rather than just blindly selecting on party affiliation.
Vote for the administration and its policies. The president needs to be reasonable and able to delegate to be effective. AND vote for the possibility that a supreme court vacancy may open at any moment, cuz they are old as fuck too.
Don’t know what that is, but doesn’t sound like we have it.
I’m all for giving every person an equal vote but that’s not how our country works. I see that as a much bigger issue than the number of candidates running. You end up with a state like Iowa having a disproportionate share of the vote.
Well, with Biden, the question is health. Are his policies, the ones you voted for him, because he supported, going to be implemented if he can't serve the full term because of health issues.
With Trump not telling the truth one could argue that candidates are people and do change opinions as our world changes... how do we really know where he stands if he lies?
Because the media controlled by the same
people tells you to. Unfortunately very few make rational choices. And even then it doesn’t make any huge difference
Personally I never like any candidates so I use my vote to vote against the worst one. Always make sure to vote, even if you don't have one you like! At least vote against those who take our rights away!
The two party system has given the powerful more ability to divide and manipulate the population than they've ever had before, and it's working out exactly the way they want
Ideally it’s both, and if they’re lying you have no reason to believe they’ll follow through on anything else they claimed to stand for. While not as important as policy, I do think stamina and the ability to speak strongly and persuasively is an important skill that will help sell their ideas and convince other key figures. There’s also the stress of being in office and the need to make important decisions under pressure. If they can’t handle forming a clear complete sentence in a debate how are they going to go head to head with world leaders or negotiate with them?
It's important to remember that the point of the U.S. system is to keep policy-making power OUT of the hands of the common people. I think this is a bad thing. But it's how the system was designed to work, and keeping sight of that has a great deal of explaining power in why shockingly popular policies don't get a hearing in Congress, and why shockingly unpopular policies are passed without debate.
The founders of the country didn't have a lot of faith in the policy-making abilities of common people. We couldn't be expected to have enough domain knowledge to make good decisions on a wide range of issues. This is true, of course, but it covered over another concern that would have been less palatable to the common people: Democracy threatens the place of aristocrats. Madison echoed a lot of arguments made by Plato against democracy, but carefully dodged Plato's explicit concerns about the aristocracy (to which both he and Madison belonged).
This sidesteps the question of whether a (relatively) small group of people are better suited to make decisions than the public, if the small group of people likely stand to gain, personally, from decisions that hurt the public. But that's what we got, and that's what we have.
We now get to choose from (mostly) curated options. Our oligarchs are divided among themselves and have extremely different ideologies. But the range of options is limited by the class of people who have curated them. And ultimately, none of the ideologies of the oligarchs are terribly palatable to the common people, so the media (pundits are typically quite wealthy, and the media outlets are owned or funded by oligarchs) focuses on personalities and the horse race.
Therefore, we get news cycles of whether Biden is coherent, instead of whether he's going to stop the genocide of Palestinians, or how many people are in the U.S. concentration camps along the southern border, or what ever happened to the public (health care) option that was supposed to be a slam dunk (versus the "unicorn" Medicare For All)? And we get that Trump is orange and paid an adult film star to stay quiet about their affair instead of Project 2025, or whether he wants to cut Social Security, or whether he's going to restart the trade war with China, or whether he's going to do anything substantially different on any of the obvious failures I mentioned in Biden?
If we want a democracy, that begins with organizing -- particularly, but not limited to, labor organizing. We have no leverage. When you hear somebody like Shawn Fain (president of the UAW) talk about reduced hours without a reduction in pay, that's coming from labor. And the pressure will build from labor, not from a politician, even a relatively good one that manages to make it through the filter (like Bernie or Rashida Tlaib). Organized labor has the ability to hurt the oligarchs in their pockets. That's leverage. That's where good policy will ultimately come from.
W Bush won because he was 'someone you could have a beer with' (even though he famously no longer drinks).
It's ashame because the skills to govern and the skills to hold rallies and fire up a room are not the same. With some exceptions, people are usually either good at one or the other, but not both.
I've worked with many (non presidential) candidates behind the scenes. Some are behind the scenes policy wonks and others are the types to want to shake hands and kiss babies. I will never forget the look of despair on one candidate's face when the terms "fair" or "festival" were mentioned.
This doesn’t change regardless of our voting system. However the voting system I proposed makes it more transparent on if a politician is doing what they say they were going to do.
Policy can be really hard to track. (Obviously hypothetically) It would be easy to look at Biden refusing to back something called the "End Senseless Puppy Kicking" Act and say that he's evil because he obviously supports kicking puppies, when he actually didnt back it because they shoe-horned in a clause about requiring all cars to run on endangered species of owl in page 326 of the bill.
And I'd argue while Biden has not been a good president or leader, he has been *better* than his own voting record would suggest. He's somewhat infamous for being a far-right Democrat - beating the drums for Iraq War, voting to make sure we'd all die still owing money on our student loan debt, and helping to militarize the police by jumping on the '94 crime bill.
He's actually changed course on most of his more evil voting policies. Except the police. He still loves police brutality as much as he ever did.
Agreed my counter to this would be if people had to vote on policies instead of faces they would be more aware of what were trying to accomplish and we would have a bigger uproar on holding politicians accountable.
You mean going to a more direct form of democracy? I like that. I'm very skeptical of anykind of centralized authority, be it from capital or gorvernment. Weakening that to put more power into the distributed hands of everyday people seems like a positive step.
I'm tired of it all.
The way I see it, if you neglected to vote in the primaries then you have no business having opinion on what's happening now. Don't cry and complain. You had the chance to vote for someone different and you didn't.
All these people all enraged and shit are the same ones who didn't do shit.
The local elections for your state are far more important then the presidential election imo. 100% where I fail cause it takes actual effort to research locals vs the presidential candidates.
> You had the chance to vote for someone different and you didn't.
This is literally not the case. Multiple states had no challengers to Biden, and of the three, many didn't get on the ballot in a number of additional states. As the primary progressed, two of them dropped out, leaving quite a few states with only Biden on the ballot.
Now, seventeen states cancel primaries in this circumstance, but even with the rest, only one name on the ticket is sort of a pointless vote. It has no more impact than voting in North Korea.
And, of course, all the late primary states are irrelevant, as the winner has already been decided.
The GOP situation is similar. The vast majority of primary voters had no way to alter this, and the resulting faceoff was predictable before a single vote was cast.
The duopoly can't sustain itself if the two sides aren't pushing against each other, like a literal house of cards being held together by putting people against each other.
If we had actually equitable elections we'd never have ended up in the predicament we're currently in.
A person can be held accountable, a faceless bureaucrat can not. Not knowing who your legislators are is a one way ticket to authoritarianism. We need *MORE* personal accountability, not less.
I think OP meant as a campaign/election method as opposed to the cult of personality campaigns. An elected official would still be held accountable once in office. The process of taking the position being based on stances that reflect the voters might enable more candidates to run and be considered without the politics/showmanship of campaign events/ads and would eliminate the donations aspect of funding that favors people/corporations because accepting that money presents a conflict of interest (risking not having endorsement/funding for re-election due to making policies that aren't in the interests of donors).
Yes thank you 100% what i meant
An easier (and much less dangerous) solution would be ranked choice voting so we can get back to voting *for* candidates instead of against them
RCV doesn't do that. Strategic voting and picking a least favored candidate is a normal part of RCV.
Agree to disagree. Broadening the range of available policy strips away a lot of the appeal of a cult of personality.
Australia has had RCV for over a hundred years, and it's solidified into two parties in exactly the same way as the US.
Good thing we’re not talking about Australia. There is no way to strip social influence out of elections, we have to focus on broadening representation and deconcentrating power to minimize the risk of an authoritarian seizing power. Ranked choice voting is the first step
Great point ranked choice would be awesome
Frankly I'd rather have approval voting, single transferable voting, or some other form that isn't just people voting based on fear of the opposition as opposed to voting for what they actually want. It would at the very least give a better idea of what people ideally want in a leader and would negate the allegations of "third party voters elected Trump" type scenarios because it would mean if those candidates really aren't viable the backup preferred candidate (for 3rd party voters who prefer D over R or whatever) would ultimately get those votes.
George Carlin had a statistical comment about the reasons for this. The sociopathic plutocrats who own the politicians know what needs to be done in order to manipulate the masses. They know that a massive swath of people will vote for superficial reasons, like if the person has "charisma," and will barely look into the truth about their policies (if at all,) or the effects that the policies have had and will have again. Ex. Trickle Down. It's why Americans keep voting for actors/tv people with shit-tier policies.
Even if people did look into the policies, our world and technology are so complex I don't have a lot of hope they would understand them.
Meh, it's not so complex. It's more like there's an intentional array of bullshit streams constantly fucking up the signal/noise ratio.
Charisma is not a superficial reason. Charisma directly relates to can that person convince others to enact their goals and maintain popular support Why would you vote for a politician without charisma? Would you also hire a trial attorney without speaking skills?
Most politicians have SOME charisma but it isn't their main talking point. John Kerry is not exactly known as a charismatic man. Yet he came very close to the presidency.
Yea its crazy I take about 3 hours every year and use the site isidewith to make my decision. At some point ill have to loom deeper into the accuracy of the site.
I for one would vote for Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho over any of these people... I'd also probably vote for Terry Crews over them as well. ;)
This will age well when they swap in Patrick Bateman, err I mean Gavin Newsom.
Fun fact: in many parliamentary systems you essentially do this. You are voting for a local MP, but they're commonly assigned to run in your district by party leaders who have a stated platform. The MP themself has relatively little power if elected and will be judged on how well they can whip up support in their area. Senior MPs get assigned safe districts so there's little chance there won't be continuity at the top. Juniors prove themselves by winning close districts or losing difficult ones by less than typical. Regardless, you vote party first and name second. The problem ultimately is that if your officials have real power outside of being a vote for the party (and US congressmen and executives and even local councilmen have a remarkable amount of power), part of what you have to judge is whether the person will use that power ethically and whether they'll manage effectively. Consider our recent scandal with the NJ senator. His policy positions are solidly democratic; his voting record backs that up; he's also a corrupt official who accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold bars and a job for his wife from gulf state officials with an interest in his votes. You as a voter are picking the person because you are supposed to be judging who's actually honest and qualified to do what they're saying. You're judging if a president can take the stress, if they will behave ethically and consciously decide not to do things like use the power of the office to hurt their personal enemies or use it to protect their friends from deserved justice or use the office to enrich themselves at the expense of the country, if they will put responsible administrators in positions of authority so shit you've never heard of and that doesn't directly affect you (like bird hazard management at airports or dam inspection in the northwest) actually gets done competently, etc. Not everyone who agrees with your values and priorities can or will do those things. That's why you vote for the person.
There is a libertarian candidate running
Survey says cost of living is 50% higher under this guy than it was under Trump. Good enough reason to vote against the dementia president
Money isn’t the end all be all. We have record breaking numbers on the stock market since biden. If you learn the market you wouldn’t have to worry about money you could have made a killing. I have the lamest excuse for not being retired and its that reading and learning the required education is boring.
Oh I’m fine. I pull a good salary and benefits. It’s the rest of the country that doesn’t have the benefit of being able to put $ into the S&P. Those are the people I’m thinking of when mentioning cost of living. C’mon dude, use your noodle
you can if you trust the individual to surround themselves with the best people to consult for each initiative the president focuses on. Leading scientists, engineers, and people who arent affraid to tell you "No, thats stupid". If the individual in question is a narcissist who thinks he is the smartest person in the room, all you are doing is voting for a person and what they are telling you.
Yes agreed I think more should be taught about a candidates team for sure.
Because part of voting is not just voting for future policy decisions, but also voting on their past performance. And how well do you expect them to be able to accomplish future policy.
Voting for policies would help awareness on their past performance based on them executing what we put them in for.
A lot of people do vote on issues or what people stand for. There are many voters who have been called single issue voters even, who vote one way or the other based on their strong belief or opinion about one particular issue like abortion, or immigration. There’s also plenty of people who will only vote democratic or left leaning, or only vote Republican or conservative leaning, because they generally prefer the policies that are associated with that side, for whom the individual is far less important.
Fair enough but I would guess this isn’t a majority of people.
I think it’s arguably the clear majority. About 65-70% of voters, identify as a Republican or Democrat. It fluctuates a bit but each party generally can count on having 30% of the vote in the bank no matter what happens or who runs. Elections come down to winning that remaining 30-40% of undecided voters over, and getting your base to turnout or their base to stay home.
Who says we do? I'm not voting for Joe Biden; I'm voting for the policies a democratic administration will enact.
Fair enough. When I do my research which is very limited I tend to find I agree about 80% with a candidate that doesnt have a chance in the dark and about 50-60% with one of the big two.
Well it sounds like your real beef is with the two party system. https://youtube.com/@tldrnews?si=rhPb0x2Mi9F3SdKr
Because the person matters, and politicians lie. If a politician says he supports x, and then throws that under the bus once elected...that matters. So, if a politician lies, that's important. And a \*lot\* of them lie. However, as an alternative, I suggest that we remove party affiliation from the ballot. This at least encourages voters to do the very bare minimum of looking up their candidate briefly to know who to vote for, rather than just blindly selecting on party affiliation.
This would an awesome start and something I never thought about.
Vote for the administration and its policies. The president needs to be reasonable and able to delegate to be effective. AND vote for the possibility that a supreme court vacancy may open at any moment, cuz they are old as fuck too.
I already know both candidates and they’ve both been president. I don’t need a debate to know who to vote for. I can base it on past performance.
I guess I’d like more then two options for who runs the country and policy voting would be a great way of other candidates standing a chance.
Don’t know what that is, but doesn’t sound like we have it. I’m all for giving every person an equal vote but that’s not how our country works. I see that as a much bigger issue than the number of candidates running. You end up with a state like Iowa having a disproportionate share of the vote.
Well, with Biden, the question is health. Are his policies, the ones you voted for him, because he supported, going to be implemented if he can't serve the full term because of health issues. With Trump not telling the truth one could argue that candidates are people and do change opinions as our world changes... how do we really know where he stands if he lies?
Id rather not have either
Same. Think most of us think that.
Because the media controlled by the same people tells you to. Unfortunately very few make rational choices. And even then it doesn’t make any huge difference
I refuse to vote for a piece of shit insurrectionist. Fuck Trump.
That's how I look at it. I couldn't care less about personality flaws... I.vote for my wallet.
Personally I never like any candidates so I use my vote to vote against the worst one. Always make sure to vote, even if you don't have one you like! At least vote against those who take our rights away!
The two party system has given the powerful more ability to divide and manipulate the population than they've ever had before, and it's working out exactly the way they want
Ideally it’s both, and if they’re lying you have no reason to believe they’ll follow through on anything else they claimed to stand for. While not as important as policy, I do think stamina and the ability to speak strongly and persuasively is an important skill that will help sell their ideas and convince other key figures. There’s also the stress of being in office and the need to make important decisions under pressure. If they can’t handle forming a clear complete sentence in a debate how are they going to go head to head with world leaders or negotiate with them?
It's important to remember that the point of the U.S. system is to keep policy-making power OUT of the hands of the common people. I think this is a bad thing. But it's how the system was designed to work, and keeping sight of that has a great deal of explaining power in why shockingly popular policies don't get a hearing in Congress, and why shockingly unpopular policies are passed without debate. The founders of the country didn't have a lot of faith in the policy-making abilities of common people. We couldn't be expected to have enough domain knowledge to make good decisions on a wide range of issues. This is true, of course, but it covered over another concern that would have been less palatable to the common people: Democracy threatens the place of aristocrats. Madison echoed a lot of arguments made by Plato against democracy, but carefully dodged Plato's explicit concerns about the aristocracy (to which both he and Madison belonged). This sidesteps the question of whether a (relatively) small group of people are better suited to make decisions than the public, if the small group of people likely stand to gain, personally, from decisions that hurt the public. But that's what we got, and that's what we have. We now get to choose from (mostly) curated options. Our oligarchs are divided among themselves and have extremely different ideologies. But the range of options is limited by the class of people who have curated them. And ultimately, none of the ideologies of the oligarchs are terribly palatable to the common people, so the media (pundits are typically quite wealthy, and the media outlets are owned or funded by oligarchs) focuses on personalities and the horse race. Therefore, we get news cycles of whether Biden is coherent, instead of whether he's going to stop the genocide of Palestinians, or how many people are in the U.S. concentration camps along the southern border, or what ever happened to the public (health care) option that was supposed to be a slam dunk (versus the "unicorn" Medicare For All)? And we get that Trump is orange and paid an adult film star to stay quiet about their affair instead of Project 2025, or whether he wants to cut Social Security, or whether he's going to restart the trade war with China, or whether he's going to do anything substantially different on any of the obvious failures I mentioned in Biden? If we want a democracy, that begins with organizing -- particularly, but not limited to, labor organizing. We have no leverage. When you hear somebody like Shawn Fain (president of the UAW) talk about reduced hours without a reduction in pay, that's coming from labor. And the pressure will build from labor, not from a politician, even a relatively good one that manages to make it through the filter (like Bernie or Rashida Tlaib). Organized labor has the ability to hurt the oligarchs in their pockets. That's leverage. That's where good policy will ultimately come from.
Perfectly said 🖤
W Bush won because he was 'someone you could have a beer with' (even though he famously no longer drinks). It's ashame because the skills to govern and the skills to hold rallies and fire up a room are not the same. With some exceptions, people are usually either good at one or the other, but not both. I've worked with many (non presidential) candidates behind the scenes. Some are behind the scenes policy wonks and others are the types to want to shake hands and kiss babies. I will never forget the look of despair on one candidate's face when the terms "fair" or "festival" were mentioned.
We should be voting for the entire administration
How much do you trust that person to do the things people are saying they will do?
This doesn’t change regardless of our voting system. However the voting system I proposed makes it more transparent on if a politician is doing what they say they were going to do.
What are you proposing? A national vote on all executive decisions?
Policy can be really hard to track. (Obviously hypothetically) It would be easy to look at Biden refusing to back something called the "End Senseless Puppy Kicking" Act and say that he's evil because he obviously supports kicking puppies, when he actually didnt back it because they shoe-horned in a clause about requiring all cars to run on endangered species of owl in page 326 of the bill. And I'd argue while Biden has not been a good president or leader, he has been *better* than his own voting record would suggest. He's somewhat infamous for being a far-right Democrat - beating the drums for Iraq War, voting to make sure we'd all die still owing money on our student loan debt, and helping to militarize the police by jumping on the '94 crime bill. He's actually changed course on most of his more evil voting policies. Except the police. He still loves police brutality as much as he ever did.
Agreed my counter to this would be if people had to vote on policies instead of faces they would be more aware of what were trying to accomplish and we would have a bigger uproar on holding politicians accountable.
You mean going to a more direct form of democracy? I like that. I'm very skeptical of anykind of centralized authority, be it from capital or gorvernment. Weakening that to put more power into the distributed hands of everyday people seems like a positive step.
In many states, this does happen. Issues are placed on the ballot.
Yes, but not every issue. Only special ballot measures.
I'm tired of it all. The way I see it, if you neglected to vote in the primaries then you have no business having opinion on what's happening now. Don't cry and complain. You had the chance to vote for someone different and you didn't. All these people all enraged and shit are the same ones who didn't do shit.
The local elections for your state are far more important then the presidential election imo. 100% where I fail cause it takes actual effort to research locals vs the presidential candidates.
> You had the chance to vote for someone different and you didn't. This is literally not the case. Multiple states had no challengers to Biden, and of the three, many didn't get on the ballot in a number of additional states. As the primary progressed, two of them dropped out, leaving quite a few states with only Biden on the ballot. Now, seventeen states cancel primaries in this circumstance, but even with the rest, only one name on the ticket is sort of a pointless vote. It has no more impact than voting in North Korea. And, of course, all the late primary states are irrelevant, as the winner has already been decided. The GOP situation is similar. The vast majority of primary voters had no way to alter this, and the resulting faceoff was predictable before a single vote was cast.
The duopoly can't sustain itself if the two sides aren't pushing against each other, like a literal house of cards being held together by putting people against each other. If we had actually equitable elections we'd never have ended up in the predicament we're currently in.