The problem is in how the electoral system is presently set up in the USA (and in Canada, by the way)....winner takes all. Such a system means that in a 3 or more party/candidate race a minority of the public can end up dictating to the majority because the majority's vote got spit between 2 or more candidates.

Such a system makes it impossible to guarantee fair voting results when there are more than 2 candidates in any election.

It's a disaster for democracy, and the Republicans have been taking full advantage of it.

Until the setup is changed, as recommended by Don Firth in his posts referring to Thom Hartmann's book and elsewhere, the only viable thing to do is for persons of a liberal or progressive philosophy to inflitrate the Democratic party (as neocons infiltrated the Republican Party after 1964) and transform it into a genuine alternative TO the neocon-controlled Republican Party. That will take time.

And in the meantime, people should press for a change in the way elections are done. Our countries need either proportional representation of the vote in the halls of power....or an instant run-off system of voting so that no candidate who has LESS than a majority of all the votes counted in a riding can EVER be elected to office. It has already been done in several other places. It can be done here in North America.