I think there's a flaw here, in imagining what we need are better people. Most people will individually be rationally ignorant. People as masses will be susceptible to all kinds of malign influence. Democracy is not a matter of abstractions but of concrete institutions. 1/

US democracy worked reasonably well when we had "100 political parties", e.g. when state parties predominated and governance was a matter of actual negotiation among non-ignorant specialist representatives. 2/

The problem now is not that people are worse. It's that the parties have nationalized, and with only two political parties competition becomes zero-sum, negotiation fruitless, and people qua masses, rather than sensibly arranged organizations, govern. 3/

Things are not so impossible. Universal enfranchisement is great! (I'm for compulsory voting, rather than limiting the franchise.) 4/

We just need to make the task of voting tractible by supplying a menu of membership institutions to which people can have meaningful connections, in which they can accurately recognize their own interests and expect the party to behave expertly and predictably in service of them. 5/

Neither you nor I nor anyone are informed enough under the present system to know what we are voting for when we vote for Democrats, beyond not the current Republicans. (Which, admittedly, should be enough! But it's not meaningful democratic representation.) /fin