Team politics are a seemingly unavoidable outcome of the way our electoral system is structured: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikip

Team politics are a seemingly unavoidable outcome of the way our electoral system is structured: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law San Francisco has ranked choice voting, but it's available to only about 14 million voters, about 6% of the eligible voter population. It tends to be mostly on progressive districts, conservatives are implacably opposed to it in my experience. The federal requirements for single member districts are also part of the problem in my view. Some states have multi-member districts but the practice seems to be in decline over the last century. I also think the strictly scheduled elections in the US are a problem. It's made electioneering into an industry and led politicians to engage in all sorts of abusive behaviors, knowing they can run out the clock. You can see the sam mindset in US-centric sports like American Football and basketball, where coaches and teams habitually exploit the clock period by retaining possession if they ahead or forcing fouls to to create turnover opportunities if not. Fouling has become part of the game and this is a Bad Thing. The same is true of politics. The US would, in my view, be far better off with parliamentary government and a little less institutional stability, so as to limit the overwhelming advantages of incumbency, and the abuses that accompany it.