If you're in the position to be buying a house, voting is basically free. Ignoring a credit score when applying for a mortgage can be considerably more expensive.

That's not what they said though, they said they are gonna vote for whoever makes their life directly better in the relative short term.

Depending on where you live that can be very true.

That's why we get people like Trump.

He sure made some people's lives better.

Yes, but only a small demographic that actually votes.

If only 1% of the population actually votes, elected representatives will tend to represent that 1%. If you cede the centre ground you get extremists.

Say what you like about Trump, he managed to get his target demographic fired up and out to vote. $boring_reasonable_politician doesn't have the same ability by their nature to get people fired up, but we still need to vote for them.

Their loyalty lies mostly with campaign financers. If campaign financers want a different outcome than voters, they get it.

But then you're back to not voting and getting a Trump again.

Not voting is not a solution.

We're agreed on that.

When you say "$boring_reasonable_politician" I think Joe Biden. <yawn>

If what Trump did last election was getting them fired up, then this election they are going nuclear. Check out the massive waves of people at his rallies versus the trickles at the Dem's gatherings.

The next election is going to be decided by about 5% of the country that’s contested. Everyone else might as well not even bother filling in the box for president

Asimov's story takes this to its (extreme) logical conclusion:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchise_(short_story)

There are more votes than just the presidential election.

Yeah that’s why I just said presidential a lot of other important elections that count on the downballot