[WS:] I think you are trying to see more than I tried to argue. My argument was limited to explaining different treatments that minority interests get under the majoritarian (winner takes all) and consensus (proportional representation) systems. In the former - minorities are invariably treated as 'spoilers' (cf. Ralph Nader) because they are spoilers - they siphon off votes that get wasted since winner takes all and loser gets nothing. Under the consensus system - far from being spoilers, minority interests are viewed as valuable coalition partners. This, I argued, created different political cultures - one that focus on the mythical "center" and treats everything else as "fringe" in the US, and one in which political minorities are seen as legitimate. I found that ironic that the Us, which has a much greater socio-cultural diversity than Europe also has a political system that is far less favorable to political representation of those minority interests than that of European countries that are far more homogeneous than the US.
That is it. This does not say much about the issue of corrupting influence of power, which in my view is an altogether different animal. It has more to do with effective democratic controls AFTER the election rather than with the system of electing representatives.
[J:] "The game as it's been played for the last thirty-odd years is rigged "
[WS:] No doubt. That is why Repugs can play it and Democrats are not in a position to do so. To pursue this analogy even further, the Repugs are like spoiled brats with wealthy parents - they do not mind bluffing and betting large amounts on a weak hand because they know that if they lose, they will be bailed out by their wealthy parents. If the Dems did the same and lost, nobody would bail them out, so they cannot afford the risk.
[J:] "> If we look at consensus governments in Europe they have communists and greens etc., but have still taken massive turns to the right. "
[WS:] True, or more accurately in my view, they turned toward neoliberalism. This, in my view, is not related to the political system itself, but to changes in demographics and the growth of the "technostructure" (middle class professionals) whose class interests are legitimized by neoliberal ideology. I wrote about it here http://wsokol.blogspot.com/2012/01/day-after-neoliberalism.html
[J:] " I guess the answer to your question is, the already psychically compromised survivors have been shocked and maimed by the class war. The war almost killed hope for many (possibly a reason the obama slogan was so successful) and has left two generations shell-shocked. "
[WS:] No doubt - I posted something similar in response to Doug. I would also like to point out another element of the American psyche that may be at work here - excessive individualism. This excessive individualism leads most critiques of the status to individual tuning out or forming a splinter group instead of getting together to "stand the ground" against political enemies. This is very nicely portrayed in Graeber's ethnography of direct action - in cases of disagreements, these folks tended to tune out and form splinter group instead of trying to preserve unity of their movement - and this was rooted in their extreme individualism, which is a defining feature of anarchism.
This individualism, btw, goes hand in hand with the advances of neoliberalism among professional middle classes - they are in fact two sides of the same coin.
[J:] "a leftie like me saying the old ways of resistance don't work anymore is just as absurd "
[WS:] what is so absurd about this proposition? Resistance is always related to specific threats and being resistant to one type of threat does not mean resistance to a new one. To use an epidemiological analogy - the lefties try to use old flu vaccines against new strands of flue and then they get disappointed when they succumb to the disease. They try the same old rituals - basically different variants of stomping their feet in the streets and showing their dissatisfaction - and then complain that these measures have zero effect on politics. Perhaps it is the time to try something totally new.
Wojtek