Losing leads to More Losing

There's a fundamental problem with trying to make the political system better by not choosing to vote effectively for one of the two potentially winning candidates.  And that is that the winners make the new rules.  So if the "lesser evil" party doesn't win, that alone give it neither capability nor incentive to "reform" by lessening the evil.  The greater evil will further bend the process towards greater evil, and that sets up the next starting points.

"Winning" can also lead to losing, but by a longer term process.  "Stability breeds instability" as Minsky rightly theorized.  But that takes awhile, it takes long enough for the previous instability to be forgotten.

In between, there is some feedback outside the electoral system itself.  Out there in the real world, where, for example, the "winning party" President may find that he has failed to deal effectively with a pandemic.

Neither duopoly party has won enough elections since 1952 to be in the "stability breeds instability" category.  That *might* have been true for 20 years here or there, such as the 20 years from 1932 to 1952, when the Democrats won the Presidency and had solid majorities in Congress

If anything, it's the Republican party which has had "winning stabiiity" since 1968 or so, winning a substantial majority of the Presidential elections since then, in substantial part helped by the institutional anti-progressivism of the Electoral College and Senate.  They have pulled this off despite having lower numbers of voters and activists nationwide, partly with greater assistance from wealth and the deep state, such as Allen Dulles who was instrumental in getting Nixon and Eisenhower elected, as well as JFK removed.

So if anything it is the Republican party which has become lax about how well things are actually going, and instead pushing their fantasies to the extreme, as Trump represents.

But it should not be surprising that there is wealth and power on both sides.  That is the way democracy works, and always has, since the Greeks coined the term.  Power cannot be ignored, it runs the show, always has, always will, and without a plebiscite would do so even more wantonly.  The best that can ever be done to power is to lean on it, divide it, and so on.  When possible, replace one power with a lesser evil one.  But the presence of differential power controlling society is a basic fact which cannot be eliminated--it is in the fundamental nature of things.  And its reduction requires greater equality in wealth and other forms of power.  True democracy is not possible without equality.  The fight for equality must be primary.