Winner take all didn’t save the whigs.

That’s not entirely true. We’ve had change-ups in which two parties are THE two parties before. Noteably, the GOP. But it MUST start at the local level. We can’t just wait until the presidential election and then complain about the voting system when all that’s left to be done is act as a spoiler candidate. We have to start now, in our own communities.

It’s also helpful when there is infighting among factions within one of the big parties. That’s one reason behind the success in getting the GOP off the ground so quickly: they made common cause with like-minded members and currently-sitting politicians of the older, underperforming Whig party. This is especially helpful when moving from local support to state and then federal level support, since you can put the apparatus of the old party to work for the new ideas (this obviously doesn’t mean absorb all the old party, just the ones that are already aligned with your mission).

The final piece is a central tenant of your platform that is both easy to understand and easy to justify simply based on morals and feels. The GOP had antislavery. We could have anti-oligarchy.

Edit: There is also another way, though: just take over the already existing party, like what the Tea Party did to the GOP. There are some pros to this, the biggest being the ability to utilize the first past the post voting system to greater advantage and ride on name recognition with the underinformed parts of the base. But there are also some big cons, mainly that the “new” party is still saddled with all the corruption and bullshit within the old party from the get-go and now have to convince voters that they are different and will change things from within. With how the top brass of the Democrats have been processing their loss in November, I’m of a mind that starting from scratch could be more beneficial. Especially since there were a lot of voters that just wanted “change”. I also don’t think that simply having a D next to your name on the ballot will work as well for progressives as having an R next to their names worked for the Tea Party.

Some form of Ranked Choice Voting could save what democracy we have. The fact that the leadership of both parties oppose it so vociferously should be enough evidence for anyone to realize it.