The previous regime, and the one before that didn’t do it either, so I think the obstacle might be something more systemic.

Yes, the systemic issue is that money equals speech which means there is no way individual citizens can compete with the influence giant corporations can bring to bare. Essentially oligarchs own both parties and the media. One party is willing to be completely, nakedly, evil and the other is just trying to maintain the status quo. But even the status quo is pretty bad for most people these days.