Reply #118: there are several reasons, imo

[paulk]

The control of the media by the powers that be is a major one. The message is, in a large part, controlled. The left is marginalized and unable to get their message out. I will also add that the left has a talent for marginalizing itself, which doesn't help.

How to get a more advanced voter? I don't know. Our citizenry is not as well educated, as a whole. Our primary education system has failed us - and with the cost of higher education continuing to rise, making it even more difficult to afford an education, I don't see much improvement. Perhaps our system of privatizing everything just plain doesn't work.

I don't believe corporations are inherently bad, myself - what I think has happened is that the money involved in gaining political office has created a system where the entities able to provide that money have gained undue influence in controlling the government, and most specifically in controlling the regulation of those entities. The Republican party has long been guilty of siding with the corporate state over the interests of the working person. What has increasingly happened is that the Democrats, because they need the money to compete, have also come under that sway. The government needs to be the watchdog standing between us and the corporate state - and they are failing in that role.

The answer is, of course, campaign finance reform - a difficult proposition, given that the people in charge of changing those laws are benefiting from the status quo.