Hot take: There needs to be less politics in Commander.

Let me preface this by saying that many political actions are fine. Teaming up on the threat for example, asking if someone has a wipe or removal for something. That stuff is great and a little collaboration in the moment makes for interesting game states.

What I'm talking about is things like multi-turn dealmaking and every game just turning into a game of contract making. Nothing ruins my enjoyment of a game more than someone saying "I wont remove your creature for as long as it doesnt target me" or things like that. Just fuckin remove it or don't. I truly think things like this just interrupt game flow and add little to nothing to the strategy. You are probably still gonna remove it anyway since it will inevitably have to go after you at some point if not otherwise dealt with. So, now i just live in fear of a removal spell and let you get extra resources, or i can just get it out of your hand now and not worry. Similar outcome either way.

Dealmaking is basically like playing cards for free. Hear me out on this one. Deals affect the gamestate. This is not debatable, and I dont think anyone will challenge me there. Why can you just say that I want this effect for myself, and as long as someone else agrees, I can get it without spending mana, a card, or anything, at literally any time. I know you cant just say I have 8 green mana for no reason, but effects like target player cannot attack you are mana costed for a reason. Why is it ok to trade the drawback of paying mana and actually playing a card with the drawback of needing the other player to agree? It just seems like the natural balance of these types of effects has already been accounted for in cards that exist. You not having them in your deck or not drawing them should actually have consequences.

Deals are completely uninteractable from the other two players as well. You can counter a card in many ways, but having an unreactable way to change the gamestate means that many effects are just there, completely unanswerable. Magic is a game of answers and you literally cannot do anything to influence two other people making a decision if they dont want you to. A deal between two players to not use removal on each others stuff is common and means that it will all be going toward the other two players, as an example of why this is bad.

As an extra drawback, the game time is always so much longer when people do heavy politics. People literally taking 20 mins to hash out the details of their deal like they were lawyers, only for one of them to forget something, who then has to walk back a bunch of stuff cuz he forgot some random subsection of the contract he just signed. Repeat multiple times a game.

TLDR: politics adds a way to uninteractively change the gamestate without expending in-game resources that ultimately only adds time and complexity to an already long, difficult game and I think people should just play the game with what they have.