A good analysis but I think there are a few more important developments to add to your ideas.

First, conservative money focused on the long haul several election cycles ago by creating influential right wing think tanks that caught moderates and liberals flat-footed. In an era (now gone) of fair and balanced media these think tanks were media sources for alternate opinions that were consistently highly biased to corporate and 1% ideas. Then we had the rise of right wing maids led by Murdoch’s FOX News, which rejected fair and balanced from the start and is the media wing of the GOP right. Now we see the conservative Supreme Court end the voting rights legislation so that voter suppression is again a major element of GOP policy. And hand in hand with these major issues came the Supreme Court decision erasing funding limits to politicians.

These have all created an atmosphere where only division is profitable in media and politics and where truth is easily distorted or totally reversed. Getting back to reality won’t happen soon. One start could be taking profit out of politics — Citizens United reversed might give us an opening here. If the governing class of business and Wall Street loses their impact on politicians perhaps we can have leaders who listen to people and not just $$.