[tom_mellior]

Whether or not the Constitution says anything about political parties, it establishes a "winner takes it all" voting system that has the effect described above. The Republican party should long ago have split into a loony Tea Party fraction and a conservative fraction, and half of the Democrats would politically be more at home in the Green party.

But these things are not realistic with a first-past-the-post system, so there are two large, internally divided, dysfunctional parties that "represent" a lot of people whose voices are ultimately not heard and whose interests are not represented by anyone.