Amusingly enough the major complaints about economic issues are, as Smooth touched on, in large part due to the "starve the beast" philosophy which attempts to cut funding to government programs then turn around and claim the government is ineffective in an attempt to make smaller government/ enrich private interests. This has been going on since the Reagan administration and is no surprise to anyone who has read into politics beyond a surface level. The republican party has thrown multiple temper tantrums in the legislature in attempts to discredit any growth this country could make in order to make Obama unelectable- however they brilliantly followed this strategy by nominating a man whose buzz is about the "War on Women" in reference to his campaign statements which severely disenfranchise women, a large percentage of the voting base.
We could talk third party but that would be a waste of time as it always is based on the way the electoral system is designed. The best a third party can do is cause the party with views most similar to their own to lose votes thereby ensuring that the party which has the most opposite views will have a significantly better chance. This will not change in the forseeable future, and probably not within our lifetime.
That said while congress has an incredibly low approval rating, individual senators (especially incumbents) enjoy the love and adoration of their represented population. People still think it's "the other representatives" that are making everything go poorly, so they continue to vote in people who have been in the seat for years to decades then turn around and wonder why nothing new ever gets done. It's sad, really.
For the most part voting in America is a bit of a ruse, to make people who don't have the time or desire to actively engage in politics feel as though they've done their "civic duty". If more of our citizens actually became involved in politics at a local and state level (campaigning, attending meetings, actually holding representatives accountable) I imagine we might see a better government than we do currently but it's much simpler to just fill in a checkbox then later assign blame so we end up with the government that we overall deserve.
In my opinion democracy cannot work over the long term simply because the populace has shown that they are easily swayed and absolutely resistant to information that dispels their worldviews. Given that we have access to the internet, the greatest research tool known in human history, there should be no such thing as false news- scandals that are distorted should be the laughingstock of our country with in days if not hours. Contrary to common sense, we have people who still believe Obama is a socialist muslim, people who think that their guns are going to be taken away, people who think that the president can somehow single-handedly write and sign healthcare, and many of the other issues that could be easily researched with a 5 minute google search, but are not.
Democracy is the best we have, yes, but if we don't come up with something better or a way to make citizens learn then we're seriously in for some hard times in the future. Watching people vote against their own self interests is amusing to some but to me it signals the start of a dangerous decline.
