When parties are roughly evenly matched, elections often turn on irrelevant or misleading considerations such as economic spurts or downturns beyond the incumbents’ control; the outcomes are essentially random. Thus, voters do not control the course of public policy, even indirectly.

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691169446/democracy-for-realists

Duverger’s law, the way the elections are winner takes all makes it mathematically certain there are only two viable options. It’s basic math which people failed at.

Vance is Dark Enlightenment, the plan going in was Trump to serve as chaos agent to dismantle democracy and then scapegoated (mimetic theory) after the destruction was complete. Vance would then step in to “rebuild” a utopian society from the ashes as Peter Thiel envisioned. The presupposition here is that democracy is effectively ended, it’s not working as planned and they would hold off until after midterms before impeach/25th Trump to maximize success in establishing whatever technofeudal dystopia they’ve decided on.