To a degree, yes. But even if you take a more pessimistic stance and assume that lawmakers have an agenda that is entirely divorced from that of their constitue

To a degree, yes. But even if you take a more pessimistic stance and assume that lawmakers have an agenda that is entirely divorced from that of their constituents, they still need to manufacture consent[1]. Which means that if you get enough voters to be strongly opposed to something, it does have an effect beyond what a small group of highly informed critics can have. The political system is neither perfect, nor useless, is somewhere in between, and I say so as someone who comes from a country with political process that leans way more towards 'broken' than the U.S. one does. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent