Identity politics have reached such an extreme that people really are what they vote, and the politics reflect that.
Politics used to be more of “we both want the country to go the same way, we just disagree on how to get there.”
Now one side is “fuck democracy, ostracize the lgbtq people, bring on the brownshirts, fuck science and the climate, too!” With pretty broad support for many of those motives.
It’s not that the system has become important, it’s that the participants have debased the system to the lowest hanging fruit on the asshole tree.