Kabuki Theater is all it is. All it has been in the last ten years (or more like 40-50 years, I guess.... when did the UNIparty really come to be? ).
Eisenhower and his notifications of the industrial defense complex.
I think there was a lot of truth to that even though he probably sounded crazy to most of America at the time.
It’s gotten worse as government largesse moved into road building, feeding the population, wealth transfers through food stamps, SSI and welfare direct deposits then morphing into education and health care.
There are few segments of the American economy that doesn’t have large amounts of government spending or control over. All of those segments are buying and paying for your representatives lock stock and barrel.
On July 2nd 1787 at the Federal Convention, Gouverneur Morris argued the necessity of a legislative house for the wealthy. The proper security is to form the wealthy and the less-well-off into separate institutions, such that the two forces will check each other. Unless the wealthy are corralled in a house of their own, they will infest and soon dominate the popular branch. Morris: “Let the rich mix with the poor in a commercial country, and together they will establish an oligarchy.”
Morris was right, and the 17th Amendment enabled the Uniparty/Oligarchy.
Once senators represented the people, a body already represented in the House, there was greater congruence between voters and their representatives in congress, with corresponding less opportunity for input from the states. For reps in the House, the 17A diminished opposition to their constituencies, increased their power, and made their votes more important to progressive special interests.