I think Churchill was credited for saying, "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all others." All things considered, I believe Chruchill was correct... For all of its flaws, I am still convinced that our form of government still has the best designed framework compared to any other form that has been tried.
Gridlock, although frustrating, is by design of our founding fathers. A three branch, check and balance system was intentionally created be a tedious and slow-moving process to keep any single branch from having too much power and control over the other. However, in my opinion, one major oversight by our founding fathers was the omission of term limits in the House and Senate as you alluded to... I believe this alone could have avoided much of the current dysfunction and partisanship that we currently endure. Term limits would have been a great check and balance in addition to the normal election process by which the voter ultimately gets to hire and fire their elected representatives. We did it for the POTUS with the 22nd Amendment, and not including both Houses of federally elected representatives in that Amendment was a mistake...
Regardless, bitter divisiveness and partisanship is nothing new in our history. There have been many instances in our great American experiment where the contention was made that our "democracy was at stake"... Some were true as in the case of the civil war, while other contentions like the hyperbolic, nonsensical rhetoric currently spewing from left is nothing if not laughably ironic in nature... I do believe that our democracy is at stake, but for completely opposite reasons... They are doing their absolute best to sell the narrative that it's Trump and MAGA who will destroy democracy, and therefore, it's sometimes necessary to disregard the rule of law and weaponize the government in order to save us. This deliberate and willful dismissiveness of the Constitution and the rule of law is what will ultimately destroy democracy if they retain power...
