I start with this from your chapter:

But when the 12 limitations are put together in such a short document, it implies western democracy is lamentably defective—and only fools would agree to be governed in such a system.

You may infer that, but the data do not imply it.

All that is necessary to save democracy is for the politicians' success to depend on producing good laws. Parties per se don't prevent that. But, given the wrong incentives, parties will prevent it.

The broken filibuster changed the incentives. Blaming the party in power for bad outcomes has always been a winning strategy. It even made sense when "the party in power" was actually the party in power. But, thanks to the modern filibuster, the "party in power" is not in power. Now, the minority can block legislation just by waving the 60-vote wand and say that the "party in power" failed to solve our problems. As a result, many politicians' success does not depend on getting things done but on stopping things from getting done. The problem is not the party system but the inherent gullibility of the electorate.

Just look at these two charts. https://imgur.com/pDgxItZ https://media.gallup.com/poll/graphs/CongressBushApproval112007Graph2.gif

I understand post hoc ergo propter hoc, but this ain't that. Our lamentable system was bending the arc of history quite nicely, thank you, considering the species, until we broke the filibuster, Then it went to shit, and radicals want to blame "the system." Just make the filibuster more politically expensive to use, restore compromise as the default senatorial posture, and the ship will right itself. Your "limitations” will then return to being just noise in the system and your arguments just the perfect attacking the good.