We've been dancing around it but I want to say explicitly: politicians are not "the same" as the people that they represent.
Conservatives for instance vote against and by and large act as if they believe that climate change is not happening, however Republican politicians - at the high end, i.e. federal even if not all the way down to every local area - know that it is happening, and it is merely a farce when they say that it is not. "Climate change is not happening" is their way of saying "well of course it's happening, but we choose to protect ThE eCoNoMy first and foremost".
Note that it is no accident that old retirees subsist nowadays on the tiny trickle from the stock market that keeps them going - so you can't regulate the stock market b/c "won't someone think of the old folks - what will happen to them!?", despite how they may get a fraction of 1% while billion- and now trillionaires take the rest. It's like the rich use the elderly as a necromancer uses zombies - in a manner called "meat shield" in gaming terminology; but it happens irl too, e.g. Hamas hid behind school-children in an identical fashion. Anyway, in return, the elderly vote to keep tHe EcOnoMy first and foremost in their minds, thus sacrificing their children to become slaves, while taking care of themselves first & foremost.
And in like manner, Democrats != liberals, with a few notable exceptions like Bernie Sanders and AOC, who ofc will never be allowed to become President or gain positions of real authority and power over the ones who hold true power.
The principle itself is not even a bad thing necessarily - ideally, leaders should be MORE responsible than the average citizen that they represent, not less. But since we have so many people working from behind the scenes manipulating things unseen, politicians are not our "leaders" these days, not truly, and instead have made themselves useful puppets that dance at the behest of their masters. Btw, this happens in literally every group that has ever existed, not even limited to human social ones, e.g. it happens in single-celled bacteria and even single-molecule proteins called prions such as those that cause mad cow disease, and probably photons (bundles of pure energy that don't even have subatomic particles and thus have zero mass) do it too I dunno, I'm just saying that it's a natural law of the universe, at all scales.
An extremely insightful video that I cannot recommend highly enough is the CGP Grey Rules for Rulers - that channel has excellent other resources too like a fantastic explanation of ranked-choice voting. Ngl, that video messed me up - I used to really want to change things, then I watched it and realize how difficult that task is to make happen. Now I am much less outspoken than I used to be, b/c I have sent myself back to school, while questioning everything that I once believed. We cannot fight the very laws of the UNIVERSE!! Which doesn't mean that liberalism has no chance, but it does significantly narrow the scope of solutions that might actually be viable enough to work.
Which is what gives me pause to lash out with instant hate against Biden's efforts to improve things. Maybe he's worthy of that, or maybe not, but I would need to understand what he's doing first, before I want to judge him. I spent years breaking down Trump's motivations btw, so I get what he's trying to do, but I have not done that for Biden. It's exhausting:-(. I wish there were people I could trust that I could just follow, but who would that be - Bernie Sanders? He is an idealist, and while that works for his seat from Maine, it would not work on the global scale, with him as the Commander in Chief. As Obama said about him, he is a prophet in the wilderness, not a king who can make the hard choices.
Anyway the forces involved are just so incredibly complex - what has worked since American's founding seems unlikely to work in the future, as the implications of globalization and automation settle in. e.g. the likes of Jeff Bezos and the Military-Industrial Complex use the American government in both an offensive capacity to increase their own profits abroad, while simultaneously as an aforementioned meat-shield to hide behind it whenever they feel scared that some other trillionaire such as Putin might come for their wealth. And keep in mind, We The People were okay with that, b/c it helped us too to have things like Google, Amazon, and weapons that we could use to defend ourselves & our allies, and offensively destroy our enemies or threaten them to not attacking in the first place, or regardless of military entirely we could also bully them in economic matters. Just like how people in Florida are okay with their leaders antics b/c it works for them, so too the American people are okay with the antics of our own leaders - or at least we were until about the late 70s. And now, we talk as if we are not okay with them, but we act as if we are, more or less.
So Rules for Rulers - check it out, and I hope that it messes you up as much as it did me, b/c that's how you know it is working:-D. As for where to go forward from here... I don't know, but even so I consider my new position to be a lot better than my previous one where I thought I knew but didn't. To be clear, that is not me even attempting to hint at implying that liberalism is incorrect, but rather me saying that if we can't make it happen in the real world, then of what use is it to be "correct"? Before we can move forward, we need to find a viable path first. Like standing at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, wanting to go westward - it's not impossible, but it is going to be rough going, and we might not all make it, and either way we need to be prepared for whatever lies ahead.