This is exactly the rhythm our American oligarchy established - trade out the "hot potato" of actually governing, vs being the opposition party in this polarized first past the post, two party paradigm. The Republicans crank up the spending on cronyism, pass out tax cuts and slash benefits, then Dems have to use all their political capital just to fix the same old issues again while mouthing support for any truely progressive ideas. But everyone makes bank on PAC cash and lobbying, personal foundations & speaking fees. Oh and running unsecured email servers (everyone) to avoid FOIA requests.

The US populace has been disenchanted with this paradigm for a while, so much that Republicans have to cheat and lie and gerrymander and impede voting access to even get close to being competitive, while the two-party system means that Democrats can get away with just being "nonshitty Republicanlite" while doing the minimum to improve lives and then there's no space left for anyone with a truely progressive alignment.

Hilary was the most establishment oligarchy type candidate possible, and Russia saw how easy Hilary had the way cleared for her, fucked around online to sow discord and then just massively lucked out with their pre-kompromatified clown candidate. (Who Hilary was just thrilled to have as an opponent because of the "easy win" - as opposed to wanting to run against the best person possible, because this is the godamned governance of our lives, not a fucking sportsball game) And enough Democrats either couldn't get to the polls (or had mysterious logistics issues with enrollment) or were sick of how the DNC conducted their primary/the whole two party paradigm, that here were are now