Seems more like a competition issue. In general if both parties weren't entrenched to this degree, they would be out competed by a group with increased transparency. "Vote for the black box behind the curtain!" vs "Vote for the person who's talking to you!" should be a pretty easy win at the poll. IMHO what we are seeing is a systemic result of the lack of competitive elections and winner-take-all and how it interacts with parties. The parties are far too comfortable. If they expected to have to compete, they wouldn't select vegetables.
I highly recommend Australia's ranked choice voting. We still have two party politics, but if a party goes too far from the electorate they'll lose to an independent or minor party. It allows candidates to target the reasonable majority instead of encouraging fishing for the votes on the fringes.
We'd have to replace our first past the post voting system if we wanted to make more parties viable and unsurprisingly most of the people our flawed system keeps in power aren't very eager to change it.
