I think that, as far as it is discernible, it’s better for the politician to go with what the majority wants. Yes, there are decisions they make that we don’t know about. But they can still know the general principles that people tend to use. It’s called a “representative democracy” for a reason.
I do allow some level of thinking you know better, but I think they should be rare, and, if it goes wrong, it should be a reason to kick them out.
Of course, this requires more people than me to think this way. And I surprisingly found that a lot of people do want things to be less democratic.
Listen again. That’s assault weapons only. Semi-automatic firearms with a detachable magazine and a pistol grip. Nobody has called for “take all our guns away”.
The beginning of anti-discrimination was here: Executive Order 8802 - Wikipedia This was a top-down order from the President; nothing democratic about it. Although he was a Democrat. It’s the first use of the magic buzzphrase “race, creed, color or national origin”.
Subsequent legislation and court cases built on this formula. With the result that SCOTUS ripped up all laws against interracial marriage in 1967. Long before the public was ready to accept such a thing.
In this later era, same-sex marriage has taken a completely opposite track. Because Roosevelt had left off “sexual orientation” from his list (more like never thought of it) there was no specific legal basis on which to build. Until much later legislation came in.
Public opinion changed relatively quickly and the law followed relatively rapidly. If anything the story of same sex marriage is more democratic not less. The people lead; the law follows.
The obvious problem we’re seeing in larger politics is that the national average contains an ever-widening dispersion between stick-in-mud reactionaries and ever-more-change progressives. It’d be instructive to see an attitude poll about same sex marriage tracked separately across all fifty states, or better yet all 3200 counties.
The essential problem being it doesn’t feel very “democratic” when the government does something that you and substantially 100% of your friends and neighbors disagree with. Until something changes so people tend to live in more politically mixed communities, politics in this country will be poisonous. Online echo chambers don’t help either.
The description in the OP fits what most politicians subject to party discipline have to do sooner or later. Personally I prefer parties without party discipline or which only invoke it occasionally, but they seem rarer and rarer.
There is also another situation that fits: when a party has fought for Option A, Option B is the one that gets chosen, and the politicians from the party which preferred A go on to defend B tooth and nail because that’s what the people have chosen. I see absolutely nothing wrong with this second case. In the words of Miguel Sanz, paraphrasing from memory: “as a private citizen, I wouldn’t be taking your questions. As a Deputy from UPN, I fought for what the majority of my party considered best. As President of Navarre, what the majority of Parliament has chosen is what is now the Law, and therefore I shall defend it to the best of my ability.” The alternative to this is issues that keep getting revisited, redone and reboiled to death every time the government changes: fuck that shit.
You should try listening again. In that video she was lamenting the fact that she was only able to get the “assault weapons”, which by the way is a meaningless, made up term, rather than getting every last gun.