[jfengel]

The voices actually are raised, in the hearings. You can watch some of them on C-SPAN. The floor of a chamber with 100 or 435 members isn't really suited for debate, but it does happen. The vote is the very tail end of a long deliberative process.

Most people only look at that tail end because the deliberation is dull, but if you want to know what it looks like, much of it is available to the public.

[jlokier]

And yet on some of the big headline issues, those tail-end votes are split almost perfectly 50:50 along party lines.

Which leads people to think, correctly, that independent-minded critical thinking is not determining those votes.

[jfengel]

It's not the vote, which is binary, but what they're voting on. It takes an enormous amount of effort to shape the language. The details matter.

[nine_zeros]

By raising voice, I mean actually voting as their base asks to. Not gonna happen in a two party system where their careers are at stake.

[jfengel]

The base asks via their votes. If they re-elect the legislator, the legislator will continue to vote the same way.

Most legislators have high approval ratings among their constituents, and practically unanimous among their party in their district. It's always other people's legislators who are the problem.

[nine_zeros]

> The base asks via their votes. If they re-elect the legislator, the legislator will continue to vote the same way.

No. People are left voting for their representatives from a set of 2. With this, most people vote for one because they hate the other and not because they like their policies.

In terms of representative democracy, American two party system is just infantile.