No Stupid Questions

Its formally considered a flawed democracy. I do the same thing with my kids. If i want them to clean their room i'll just ask them "do you want to clean your room, or you want to do the dishes and take out the trash?" and they'll always go for cleaning their room because it feels like they are getting something out of the deal, it's less "nasty" and they have a sense of choice but realistically i win in both scenarios.

A top-two runoff system is considered democracy. A system where the two parties are just the same thing, like in North Korea, is not.

Americans consider their two parties as very flexible about what they stand for. If there is a big enough group not represent by the incumbent, the other parties' primary will be biased towards this group.

What we saw this time around, though, was two incumbents running against each other with no room for the non-represented group to be reflected. Thus, to that group at least, it felt like there was no difference (at least in the represtation).

Those that believed that there was no difference are now finding out how much of a difference it was - and they are now yearning for another vote to fix things.

It's only so to those whom have been conditioned to believe so

Short answer is capitalist propaganda. The illusion of freedom is important to maintain control and curb resistance.

Edit: my mom was a school teacher and she taught me a trick for manipulating children that is similar. Instead of telling a kid to do something like" little mark do your homework." You give them two choices both of which will satisfy your agency. Like "little mark would you like to do your math homework first or your English?" Which is super equivalent to would you like a democrat or a Republican? Also the only way one of those candidates can get to be one of the last binary choices is completely dependent on financial backing which almost always comes from the capitalist class.

That's not what democracy is.

Democracy is simply a system of government where leaders are voted on instead of inheriting their title or gaining it through physical force and coercion.

The original form of democracy had slavery, and excluded women and non-land owners, the word simply distinguishes which mechanism brings someone to power, it doesn't inherently imply fairness or free choice.

The United States is a one party state, but with typical American extravagance, they have two of them

There is nothing limiting it to two parties. honestly its first past the post that is more of an issue.

It's not like the two party system is deliberately chosen or enshrined in law. The field naturally winnows down to two parties because that is basically guaranteed to outcompete every other possibility under a first-past-the-post voting system. You want to fix the two party system, you need to fix our voting system.

Because someone with a lot of money released a ton of propaganda to make people believe this was ever a democracy.

Many democracies form coalitions between smaller parties to create a majority voting block - the US just does it before the election.

That's exactly why so many countries around the world roll their eyes when America bangs on so much about democracy.

It's a marketing thing. Look around the world. Find any country with the word "Democratic" in the name, and odds are you'll find a poor excuse for a democracy.

The actual democracies in the world don't feel compelled to keep repeating the fact.

The reality is that America is only really a democracy in the loosest sense of the world. All you need to do is look at how often the wealthiest candidate wins to see that it's true. Or how often the person with the most votes loses. Or how unregulated lobbying actually is. Or the insane amount of power the President actually has. The power doesn't lie with the people - it lies with the super-rich.

Sorry if that came off as really negative! America has a lot of good stuff going for it, but its implementation of democracy is not one.

I have a passing familiarity with the politics of a couple countries, and they all fit this pattern: their constitutions say nothing of a two-party system, they don't even say anything about parties at all. People just choose to create political parties, and then those parties coalesce into two major parties.

The reason that this happens is because people, from voters to every level of politician, look at the rules of the game and make tactical decisions; their tactical decisions cause a two-party system to emerge.

The USA is a really extreme case of this; in Europe there are more parties, and they even very occasionally come to power. Current french president Macron broke a decades-long streak of two-party governance in his country.

Further viewing material:

What is tactical voting

Minority Rule: First Past the Post Voting

The Alternative Vote Explained

My takeaway from this is that there are things that can be done to improve the voting system, as suggested in these videos; but i don't even like representative democracy at all, i think there's better solutions in direct democracy (referendums and such). Representative democracy was designed to put elites in charge, voting was initially reserved for land-owning nobility. Extending voting rights to more people doesn't change what the system is designed to do.

You aren't forced to vote for those two parties.