If you look at the histories of many politicians, you see them making honest efforts to represent their people... in the beginning of their careers.
A major problem is that there's so much money in campaigns that in order to get enough money to compete, a politician must make deals with donors. Often these donors are small groups of high wealth individuals or industries.
Now the politician is effectively in the pocket of the monied interests, or else they are out of government cone next election cycle.
Until campaigns are equally financed by "the people", the results will not have a chance of being representative of what the people want.
But ironically, to make that change would require the current government to take action that most of the big industries do not want. Thus, it will not happen.
When you spend most of you working day and a lot of your personal time mingling with high worth individual, it is only a matter of time before you lose sight of what is their interest and your people interest. Also those high worth individual are not bad person or repulsive. I'm sure a lot have good intention but are too sheltered. They can become your circle of friend and there is no way back from there.
There is also the plain political game. You can't make a political career alone, you need allies, people that trust you and support you within the party, above and under. Over the years, you get stuck in a network of dependencies that ties your hands.
And there is the sad reality that no single decision is going to improve anything. You need continuous and consistent effort in one direction for years. So even if you are aware of all that I listed above, the truth is that you can't go fully lose cannon and actually achieve anything lasting.
That's why I'm watching the new crop of Congresspeople like AOC, to see if we can spot if/when that change does occur.
I know for folks like Sanders, it might have switched early on, but he's getting more and more curmudgeonly about corporate thievery, eco-destruction, and worker rights.
A major problem is that there's so much money in campaigns that in order to get enough money to compete, a politician must make deals with donors. Often these donors are small groups of high wealth individuals or industries.
Now the politician is effectively in the pocket of the monied interests, or else they are out of government cone next election cycle.
Until campaigns are equally financed by "the people", the results will not have a chance of being representative of what the people want.
But ironically, to make that change would require the current government to take action that most of the big industries do not want. Thus, it will not happen.