There is a democratic process involved. Supreme Court members are nominated by an elected president and affirmed by an elected Senate. It's democracy at an arm'

There is a democratic process involved. Supreme Court members are nominated by an elected president and affirmed by an elected Senate. It's democracy at an arm's length, but it's not as if they inherited the positions or got in through force of arms. But it introduces a fairly obvious winning tactic: devote 100% of your effort to dominating that specific branch, and then you control all future decisions by the others. If you keep an eye on the bottom line, you make just enough allies to control the Court membership. Do that long enough and then 49% of the population simply don't matter any more. Their votes might as well not exist. That's why you get two parties: each is threatening to do that to the other. Anybody who isn't part of one or the other is already completely irrelevant. Somebody has a majority and they make the rules, forever. It's a 51% attack. All I can say in its favor is that it seemed like a sufficiently good idea at the time. The failure modes were pretty obvious, but they counted on a majority of people not being willing to completely eliminate the power of the rest. Turns out that was wrong.