If you haven’t been able to see the tangible ways that one party is way more beholden to monied interests by this point, I don’t know what it will take.
Some people just want to watch the word burn.
Some people just want to watch the word burn.
Keeping the people divided is the key to keeping the establishment powers entrenched in office. So long as the people hate the alternative sufficiently, they need not worry about the quality of their own candidate. Clinton won the popular vote, yet I think it's safe to say that most voted for her not because she truly was the type of candidate that people wanted in office -- but because the alternative was considered absolutely unacceptable under any circumstance. And the same is no doubt true of much of Trump's support.
I don't think another Ross Perot 1992 is ever likely to happen. If that's before your political period, an independent individual (vastly more eloquent and reasonable, but politically similar to Trump) ended up making a huge run. At one point he was actually ahead in the polls against candidates from both parties. In the general he ran against Bush and Clinton, even then some of the most powerful names in politics. He pulled 19% of the vote - destroying Bush's incumbency and effectively giving the presidency to Clinton.
But far from just a spoiler, that's a single outsider independently threatening to 'take over' Washington. The increasingly sensationalized and divisive rhetoric with a focus on identity politics, really began to spike in the elections to come. So long as both side of the political spectrum think those on the other side are completely intolerable, it makes it much easier to control people. You can even get them to do things like vote for people they don't actually want in office -- they just need to be convinced that it's better than the alternative.
Money overcomes political ideals or the interest of those with less money.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...
"Report by researchers from Princeton and Northwestern universities suggests that US political system serves special interest organisations, instead of voters "