"woefully inadequate. The Democrats, timid as always"

The 'fixed 2 party system' will be the death of the USA. In Software Engineering I came across the statement - consider a tree: Growth creates Structure; Structure inhibits Growth.

The 2 parties have reached a stage where neither is able to move without perhaps bringing down the whole system built up with excessive amounts of money over decades.

The First past the post and optional voting systems ensure that there can be no change, so neither party has any need to do anything different - and the money fountains don't want any real change they don't initiate either. Empires have stumbled along for ages in such conditions.

But as the system crushes harder to stay on path, the bright kids from other countries who used to move to the USA for a career will start to say "It's too hard/nasty/opressive there now, I'll stay in China/India/Korea/Aust/UK/etc as now things are much beter here in the long run". A few generations of that, and the US Military/Industrial Complex are gonna find it hard to get workers who can tell one end of a screwdriver from another, let alone those who can think 'creatively' especially from the hordes of PseudoScience Graduates fed on 'Intelligent Design' - which was a great idea for Populace Mind Control, but far too 'effective' in the long run... :-)