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As an appreciator of pedantry, what do you say to those who claim it's more of an "oligarchy" than a "democracy" in the United States these days?


'We' voted for what 'we' got. The Democrats did not message well enough to win over the majority of the popular vote nor the electoral vote; full stop. So; if we are indeed an oligarchy and not a democracy, the majority want to live in an oligarchy, find other messaging that the GOP puts out as more important in their individual day-to-day lives, or the messaging that the Democrats put out isn't resonating enough to overpower the GOP's.

That said, I don't believe in focusing on class-based politics in this day and age; the Supreme Court has made it clear that money is permissible to influence election outcomes and that can and does drive these sorts of structural shifts in politics to allow for the ultra-wealthy to massively influence political outcomes in our country.

TL;DR: I would tell someone that being under an oligarchy may be true (I cannot be certain as I'm not a political scientist), but there are other far more important issues TO THE GENERAL ELECTORATE that resonate better and should be the focus of future candidate messaging in order to win the election.


People were only given 2 options. The democrats didn't even have a primary. We didn't really get democracy. There are plenty of things that are broadly unpopular that elected officials do and it's a lazy oversimplification to say that that's what the majority want.


There was a primary, it just wasn't a hotly contested one. I voted in it...

That being said, there was no contest post Biden drop out, although there was a party alignment


The person that ran for office was not the person that won the primary.




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