While any such system can be changed or dismantled by popular will, it certainly can't happen by voting. Look at how slavery was dismantled - it took decades of organizing to create any wide-spread negative sentiment against it to even begin to make it possible to have candidates who would oppose it.
Who do you imagine could suddenly unite the whole country behind them as presodent strongly enough that they would actually be able to dismantle something like the defense budget? Do you even know how much of the economy is currently financed by that, and would have to go through a painful re-org if that money would stop, or even if the way it was being received changes?
Slavery _could_ have been dismantled by voting, just look at other UK colonies. The reason war was required isn’t that voting wasn’t enough, it’s that there weren’t enough votes.
It's not the voting that would have done it - it's the organizations that worked hard to convince people to care. People aren't blank slates who decide their positions in front of the ballot. Politicians supporting an idea don't just appear because that idea exists.
That's my point - not that it took a war to end slavery in the South, but that it took decades for slavery to become unpopular in the North (and the other UK colonies). It didn't just happen over night, same as one candidate that is anti the military-industrial complex won't appear overnight and be able to dismantle it.
Who do you imagine could suddenly unite the whole country behind them as presodent strongly enough that they would actually be able to dismantle something like the defense budget? Do you even know how much of the economy is currently financed by that, and would have to go through a painful re-org if that money would stop, or even if the way it was being received changes?