Actually all decisions take much slower to make with fringe groups. Even the stupid ones. That helps in such times.

Srivathsa

Leanan-- your opinion if you care to give it:

"They" were almost hopelessly divided, but as Gary Wills describes, (Henry Adams and the Making of America)even Jefferson came around to accepting the need for a strong central government. I suppose "they" hoped they could create stability without degenerating into a new monarchy.

Now "we" are stuck with their fateful choices-- how could "they" have forseen that "corporations" would be counted as "persons" with rights to "free speech" and yet no statutory responsibilities to support the nation that supports them?

At this point, do you really think it matters which of the candidates we have been presented is elected?

Is Emma Goldman correct? ("If elections really changed anything, they would make them illegal.")

Our founding fathers were afraid of change. They set things up to ensure stability. Hence, we have only two political parties at any one time, without much difference between them.

Actually, our founding fathers abhorred political parties and didn't want them. The political parties that they observed in Britain were considered (quite rightly, especially at that time) as sources of corruption. Regardless of what the Framers wanted, the formation of political parties was almost inevitable. Once parties arose, the electoral/governmental system established under the Constitution had and continues to have the effect of discouraging more than two major parties,

It seems to me that the real factor in change is the degree to which the corporate elites can be set against one another - to think they are a unified, monolithic whole misses the fact that there is a lot of inter and intra-industry disagreement on many of these 'big issues'. Once the corporate elite are divided, that leaves a pretty big opening for progressives to making lasting reforms.