Why progressive change is so hard: exploring the structural/systemic factors in the US

This is something that I had posted about in a thread here a month or so ago, but I figure it deserved its own OP.

There are many structural and systemic reasons for why enacting sweeping progressive reforms to the US government is such a difficult task, some of them which have been discussed plenty of times before, but others that are a bit more fundamental and basic to our political system.

The "people" and "the government" are not the same (in practice), and "We the People" only elect a small number of federal officials (537-the President, Vice President, and the Congress) out of several million people who work for the government. And of those 537, exactly two of them are individually accountable to ALL of the voters, once every four years. Others are accountable to their state's voters (the Senate) or their districts' voters (the House) in their own respective elections. And half the population doesn't bother or aren't able, for whatever reason, to participate in the once-every-four-years process of electing the head of state AND government of the most powerful country in the world.

This, of course, is without mentioning the role of the Electoral College, congressional gerrymandering, unequal representation in the Senate, the role of the Supreme Court and all the other parts of the judicial system, concerns over federalism and states rights and local control, the role of the mass media, the role of money in politics, the roles of racism, sexism, classism, and other "isms" in dividing the masses of ordinary people from each other, and so many other structural and systemic factors that make enacting a progressive/left-wing/liberal agenda-even if it's popular with the public, as so many on DU have noted- so damn difficult.

I understand (and share, to a considerable extent) the frustration, anger, and bitterness that a lot of people have about our system and our elected representatives (or the people who are theoretically our elected representatives). But I don't think that we can ignore the reality of how our system operates.

My $0.02.