I’ve noticed that there are sort of two different ideas of what the job of congressperson or senator is. As far as I can tell, everyone more or less thinks one of these ideas are self-evident and universal, and so people tend to make assumptions in political discourse that may not be valid.
The first definition (and I should disclaim that this is the definition I prefer) assumes that the job of the individual legislator is to do whatever action, undertaken after carefully consulting with experts in related fields, is best for the country. The voter votes for this legislator not necessarily because ze agrees with the legislator on specific issues, but because ze agrees with the legislator on the overall vision of what society should look like and trusts the legislator to do what will best bring that state of affairs into being. This is basically a technocratic definition.
The other definition is a democratic definition. In this, the job of the legislator is basically to keep an ear to the ground and listen to zer constituents. This legislator is basically the mouthpiece for either the majority or the most passionate minority, and zer own personal understandings and opinions are not the guiding principles of zer actions. The voter here looks at the issues and votes for a candidate ze believes agrees with zim on all the important issues.
I am fully aware that it’s possible that the ideal representative is somewhere in between these two extremes; perhaps some sorts of issues (economic issues, environmental issues) should be dealt with using experts and rational decision making while others (social issues) should be based on the popular will. But I also think that it’s important to have this discussion, to get this issue out in the open so we don’t continue to expect a “broken” system to get fixed when we don’t even know what the system is or should be.