@Iminthewrongstory
I'm afraid I don't understand, Goosefoot.
Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and other candidates who I don't think you would call 'neoliberal' were put before the voters - and ultimately the public didn't go for them. However, their campaigns did succeed in moving the Dem platform to the left. Most of my friends supported Warren, a few Sanders, one or two Harris or other candidates. They are now all supporting Biden. And I gotta say my friends are neither 1 percenters or deluded idiots. One is a disability activist and this campaign is very important to her.
In the UK, ultimately, (though, of course, it's a different system and parties beyond the main two have more purpose and power) the voters didn't go for Jeremy Corbyn. (BTW, OF COURSE people are told just to vote Labour! That's what political parties do.)
If you don't think it's about third parties, and you don't think that voters are voting for the correct candidates - are you saying there shouldn't be elections?
I expect party propaganda to say, vote for x anyway - not people in a discussion unless they are simply party people.
Sanders is a moderate social democrat, really - Warren I am not convinced is really any different than a Biden, in practice, but who knows. Yes, neither won, but do the Democratic (or Republican) party machines really return candidates that reflect what people would like to vote for? They doesn't seem that they are particularly affective at doing so. Any polling you see suggests that huge numbers of voters think all of the candidates are bad, that they don't really want to vote for any of them, that there is significant lack of trust. There is also huge manipulation of the system in terms of financing and propaganda, and people realise that.
What's interesting and suggestive is that they have for years been returning candidates who are largely indistinguishable in their economics while attempting to differentiate themselves in other areas which have little or no impact on social structure. This is true outside of the US as well, which is also interesting, and has created similar responses of grass roots voters turning to more extreme parties and candidates. The Americans however have little protection against the influence of money on their political system.
It's not a matter of voters voting "wrong" its a matter of them having no real choices, and every choice they have is likely to make things worse. Voters don't have a solution to that.
Unless somehow the political classes change their behaviour. It's not clear to me that institutionally the American system is robust enough to do that, it doesn't change easily and it was designed with a very particular kind of society in mind.
I wouldn't say I think they shouldn't have elected officials. But unless the political class comes up with some real options, I think that is the likely outcome within the next 100 years. Some kind of descent into political gridlock and social chaos followed by authoritarianism. Possibly some kind of real shock might make them wake up, but so far, the climate emergency, COVID, the 2008 crash, the Occupy movement, the current chaos around race and police brutality, and Trump, have not done it.