yeah the older i've gotten and the more i understand the political history of the US, my viewpoint on the two party system has changed a lot... not so much my hatred of it, but more understanding how the predominant power brokers have leveraged different ideologies to manipulate people into these two perfectly balanced damn near 50/50 parties.
As it pertains to Ross Perot, as a third party candidate, what i'm saying is that abortion and the host of other issues i mentioned have no basis in conservative political ideology, as some people leave the party over one issue (say conservative republicans leaving due to a new york tax-and-spend liberal democrat- Trump- conning his way into a republican nomination) - other people (such as democrat white nationalists) get brought into the fold and become republicans, but the 50/50 is maintained by adding or shifting on these hot button issues.
The rich and powerful minority are always leveraging the votes of a poorer majority by manipulating the party messaging. What is interesting - in a very Orwellian sense- is how at different times in history this messaging has shifted... some really good ones to pay attention to is Abraham Lincoln, McKinley/Roosevelt, and Kennedy/Johnson. In all these cases the traditional power brokers got bucked either due to overwhelming popularism and/or an assassination... essentially the guys trying to hold the reigns on democracy got bucked off for a minute. If you watch the way the parties and the messaging changed during these periods to maintain the 50/50 balance, it teaches you a lot about how our government works.
I think the Trump thing is going to go down as another one of these major seismic shifts, its interesting to be experiencing it in real time. Watching the conventional powers trying to maintain their 50/50 balance and control political institutions while popularists on the left push for a Sanders nomination, and popularists on the far right consolidate around a nationalist message.
What is interesting about the bicameral system in America is that it doesn't align to the conventional socialist vs. nationalist platforms that most other countries have naturally settled on. The Trump thing is- in my opinion- a transition back to a more organic political narrative dividing people into 'Nationalists/ Fascists' and 'Socialist/communists.' The wealthy and powerful, trying to maintain the power structure, will obviously message this to continue to maintain 50/50 voting balance to keep politics stable. You cant go out and say 'we are the party for the top 5%' and 'we are the party for the bottom 95%' without it being a pretty conclusive landslide of voting, so you have to split up these hot-button albeit entirely inconsequential issues to keep the voting split even and maintain upper crust protectionisim within both parties.
does that all make sense?