They can. The media will do everything in their power to distract people and prevent them from identifying the things truly causing their problems. As long as people think the main problems in America are immigrants or trans people or racists, they won’t look at who is picking their pockets.

(This isn’t even to say there aren’t real problems. But they have enormously outsized influence.)

Any politician who correctly identifies these issues will be labeled as fringe. So likely the only solution will be local politics.