> I voted for Perot. What I ended up with was Clinton. <
Same here. There’s got to be a way to reform this so that we keep the Electoral College, but minimize the damage done by spoilers.
To take down Trump in 2020 all the Dem’s need do is find - and fund - a “moderate conservative” to run as an independent. John Kasich, maybe?
I think that the emphasis there is wrong. You see, what really condemns us to these Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Idiotic races is the 17th Amendment.
Before that Amendment minor and regional parties could hope for national significance because they could be locally successful. This meant that at the State level those weren’t wasted votes which allowed these to flourish to the point that they could be big enough to step in should either of the two big partys crumble or badly stumble. This did happen with the Republicans when the Whigs crumbled.
The 17th put an end to that. With the 17th all the independent movements like the Grange withered. This let the partys press their character down on everyone from the top down and was a windfall in power to big city elites.
Remember John Anderson? He ran against Reagan in ’80, and got plenty of votes to turn any election since 1984 - but in 1980, he ended up being a footnote in Reagan’s landslide.