There's also a relentless propaganda effort to convince voters to abstain from voting unless there's a party that exactly matches their views in every aspect of the party's manifesto. If they fail one narrow single-issue purity test, of if their leader looks funny while eating a sandwich: game over.

If both the major parties are wrong on an issue, I ask which one is more likely to do a U-turn. You can never have everything in a democracy. But then, in an authoritarian system, you'll probably get nothing but a boot in the face. Some people might think those are somehow equivalent. I don't.