Politics in America is like sports: people feel compelled to root for their home team no matter how much the team sucks

It's amazing how many people continue to cling to their party, but politics in America is more like sports: people feel compelled to root for their home team no matter how much the team sucks. I think an encompassing problem here is that Americans have become incredibly jaded about the political process. They vote for who they think has the best chance of winning, not who they want to win. That mental mode means that the person who runs the slickest campaign and gives lip service to the most interest groups will win, not the person with the best ideas or qualifications. And it means third-party candidates are continual non-starters. Another fairly distressing problem is that the American public is by-and-large becoming more ignorant as time passes. Most people don't care about in-depth political news, and when they do they tend to get their news from a biased source like Fox News. American educational systems are producing people with less critical-thinking skills. The only thing really keeping a democracy from descending into tyranny is an educated public. The public is the largest check and balance in the U.S. system, and Americans are failing to meet their obligations as citizens.