That elections are "competitive" is utterly irrelevant in a political system where local, state, and federal legislation is almost exclusively drafted by lobbyists. Lobbyists who in addition to supplying pre-written legislation also supply staffers with pre-formatted position statements to distribute to anyone who bothers contacting their office about said.

In practice that "competition" you seem so taken by produces nice sound bites and some column inches on whatever culture war rag is being waved in the face of the citizenry, and literally nothing of substance that addresses any of the myriad slow burning economic and systemic crises that have been building for the last 40 years.

Using agriculture as a microcosm for the larger economy there has been nothing proposed much less ratified to address the complete chokehold Monsanto, John Deer, Cargill, and Tyson Foods have on every aspect of the agricultural industry . And they've had literal decades to make a move.

Princeton University released a study 16 years ago that concluded the US was a de facto oligarchy and if anything legislative capture has only deepened in the US since then. Hell at the local level I've watched the county planning board float a ballot initiative to greenlight a major construction project which was soundly rejected by local voters. Net result: 5 years later they broke ground on the project anyway. So you can tell me there's movable needles out there until you're blue in the face, let's see some reciepts.