True. I’m gonna go out on a limb and add another reason: Money in politics.

When I was a kid, if a politician was accused of taking bribes, they would fall over themselves to deny the accusation. Later, the politician would simply reply, “It was pay for access, not a bribe.”
Now, they don’t even respond to such accusations. Bribes are so normalized that we don’t even notice them anymore.

(For the pendants, yes there are pols that are occasionally punished for literally accepting bribes, some recently. My point is that there is little difference between literally accepting money and storing it in a freezer and having several billionaires fund your re-election campaign with dozens of legal loopholes.)

This allows The Rich to have a very heavy hand on the tiller for which way elections go. If rich folks weren’t pouring big money into elections (corporations are people too!) I’m willing to bet at least one political party in the US would be dead now.