[bee_rider]

I would like to believe this, but legislative outcomes on things that you'd expect to be bipartisan (like dealing with the pandemic) have been fairly poor, right? If there really was this large moderate population, you'd expect us to elect moderate elected officials, who'd find each other and pass some moderate legislation, right?

[dantheman]

The primary process is not well attended my the normal voter, only those on the extremes. So to win the primary you have to go more extreme, then to win the general you have go more moderate. So we ended up having to choose between more extreme candidates that don't reflect the majority. In fact the majority of people don't identify as republican or democrat.

[bandushrew]

The extremes always vote, many moderates only bother to vote if you can convince them the other side are totally insane/evil/stupid and life as they know it is going to be over if the other side get into/remain in power.

So politicians in particular get very good at making the other side look extremely insane, evil and stupid.

The better they are at that (lying) the better they do in elections.

So...the politicians who would be good for us tend to have integrity and strong personal beliefs about lying, and so tend to do poorly in elections.

Which leaves us with everyone else.