The United States, and the West in general, have long proclaimed themselves the most democratic countries in the world. Yet after more than two centuries of elections, the leaders they produce seem to get worse with each passing term. The core question is: what exactly has gone wrong with the American electoral system? The elected representatives no longer serve the people or the country; instead, they fight for the interests of the financial backers behind them.

The American electoral system is indeed in deep trouble—so deep and so entrenched that it has reached the point of “systemic rot.” The framers who drafted the Constitution in 1787 could never have imagined that the carefully designed republican democracy they created would, two centuries later, degenerate into what we see today: a “rich man’s game” that on the surface involves universal suffrage but is in reality completely hijacked by money, media, and party machines.

1. Money has completely captured elections

The raw data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) is merciless:

• The 2024 presidential election is projected to cost more than $15 billion—over five times the amount spent in 2000.
• On average, a Senate seat now costs more than $100 million to win, while a House seat starts at around $20 million.

Where does all this money come from? After the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. FEC ruling, Super PACs and “dark money” groups have been allowed to accept unlimited donations as long as they nominally do not “directly coordinate” with candidates. The result:

• In 2020, the top 100 donors (mostly billionaires and corporations) provided 20% of all election funding.
• In the last 20 years, 94% of winning congressional candidates were the ones who raised the most money (according to OpenSecrets—almost without exception).

From the day they announce their candidacy, candidates are not running for voters; they are running for donors. Once they win, they naturally have to pay back the favors. Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, Big Pharma, the Israel lobby, teachers’ unions… whoever pays the most gets their agenda put front and center. The voice of the ordinary voter is completely drowned out in an ocean of dollars.

2. The primary system produces extremist candidates

The real election in the United States is not the general election in November; it is the party primaries held the previous year. Primary turnout is extremely low (usually 15–25%), and the participants are highly ideological:

• On the Democratic side: far-left activists (“progressives”)
• On the Republican side: evangelicals + far-right populists

To win the primary, candidates have to pander to their respective extremist base. By the time the general election arrives, both sides have become “lunatics,” leaving moderate voters to choose the lesser of two evils. The rise of figures like Trump and AOC is not accidental—it is the inevitable product of this system.

3. Gerrymandering has turned 90% of congressional seats into “jobs for life”

By manipulating district lines, the party in power can turn more than 90% of House seats into “safe seats.” Incumbents no longer have to worry about losing to the opposing party; their only real fear is being primaried by a more extreme challenger from their own side. Thus their only real jobs become:

1. Desperately raising money from donors
2. Out-extreming everyone else inside their own party

This has directly caused congressional polarization to reach historic highs: according to a 2023 Pew Research Center study, the ideological overlap between Republican and Democratic members of Congress is essentially zero—worse than in 1994.

4. The revolving door and “legalized corruption”

Retired American politicians earn dozens of times more after leaving office than they did while in power. Barack Obama made over $70 million in speaking fees, book deals, and Netflix contracts in the two years after leaving office. The Clintons did even better—roughly $1 billion in 15 years. Former members of Congress go on to become highly paid “advisors” at big corporations and lobbying firms, pulling in millions a year. This is called “deferred bribery”—you don’t take the money now, but you know the payoff is coming later.

5. The media completes the corruption

When six corporate conglomerates control 90% of American media, when algorithms only feed you content you already agree with, and when “news” becomes nothing more than “emotional feeding,” voters completely lose the ability to judge reality. During the 2024 election cycle, some of the most popular political accounts on TikTok turned out to be fake accounts run by Russia and Iran—and that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Problems the Founding Fathers never foresaw

Jefferson, Madison, and the others feared “mob rule,” so they designed the Electoral College, the Senate, and a lifetime-appointed Supreme Court to act as checks on direct democracy. What they never anticipated was that the real threat would not come from the mob, but from an iron triangle of oligarchs + media + extremist activists that would turn the entire system into a carnival for the few.

Today’s American politics is no longer “of the people, by the people, for the people.” It is “of the money, by the money, for the money.” The reason elected leaders keep getting worse is not that Americans have suddenly become stupid; it is that the system now systematically rewards the people who are best at raising money, best at acting, and most shameless—rather than those who are most capable, most far-sighted, and most honest.

Thucydides once said that democratic systems destroy themselves because of their own success. The United States is proving that statement with its own practice. It is not democracy itself that is wrong; it is this mutated, money- and technology-corrupted version of democracy that has reached its end.

Unless radical reforms are carried out—abolishing Citizens United, full public financing of campaigns, proportional representation, banning the revolving door, and breaking up media monopolies—the leaders America elects will continue sliding down the path of “getting more and more outrageous” until the entire system finally collapses.

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