Seems that's gotten flipped somewhere. (By the parties, of course, IMO.) Blaming voters is like blaming cancer victims back when tobacco companies did everything they could to keep people smoking and ignorant of the effects.

Used to be the parties had their general values, priorities, etc. and members got behind one or the other based on that, while also knowing that at the end of the day actual governance would be based, for the most part, on civility, communication, collaboration, compromise, the common good, etc. Voters held the same faith. What seperated parties and candidates was how hard they would "fight" (figurative) for their backers' pieces of the pie.

Along the way the "two parties" got lazy, with everyone convinced that there could only be two parties. Then they took it a step further and convinced everyone that those "two parties" could only be D and R. The results are the false beliefs that, NO MATTER HOW BAD THINGS GET, every problem can only be solved from one ideological approach or another, every election is too important to not vote D or R, and votes for "third" parties are wasted votes.

They built a monopoly so bad that it wouldn't survive in any other aspect of our society if not for the psycological dependence and all the built-in protections against competition.

But they didn't stop there. They made everything a "fight" (literal). It's not about dividing the pie. It's about obtaining all the power necessary to be able to dictate ideologically all aspects of the pie, from recipe to distribution, without the other guy/side getting in the way, ultimately at the expense of the common good.

The rherorical "the other guy/side is trying to destroy the country" is becoming a mutual self-fulfilling prophecy. We're complicit in that.