> You just get to try and elect people who will HOPEFULLY do what's in your best interests.
You get to do a bit more than that, though few ever do.
Making full use of representative democracy means continuously contacting your representative, not leaving them alone until you're convinced they'll act in your interests, and not leaving your friends/family/community alone until you've got as many other people as you can badgering your representative just as much. It's very time consuming and won't work at all if there aren't enough people with the same problem but, in the case of the author of this article, the relevant problem is quite widespread.
Sure, you get to call an intern in their office who will put a tally mark in a spreadsheet. The congressman may use this "how many people called about X" data to make decisions on what to vote for, or they may not.
Yes. But you can do this weekly. And spend tons of time getting others to do this weekly. Dozens of calls about X have more than dozens as many timed as much impact as ome call about X.
If you get a bunch of people with the same concern to form an ”organization“, and then you spend weeks making repeated requests for your congressman to meet with your group, they'll eventually do it. You can write a op-eds and publish content on the internet to try to generate political will. You need to convince your rep that (to go with the example from the article) thousands of their constituants think that the ACA is a terrible idea and that they would enthusiastically support this other policy in its place. If there is a sensible policy that a large fraction of the country would support that hasn't been proposed in a bill yet then they might consider trying to look good by being the one to propose it.
I'm not saying it's easy or that it's guaranteed to work. I'm just saying that most people's civic engagement is about 0.001% of what it should be if they really want a voice in the government.
Picking a candidate for President (a position which isn't even in the legislature) is not the most effective way for you to drive policy.
"The problem with the way you advocate is that you don't act like professional lobbyists"
I wonder why it is, that normal citizens with jobs and kids and mortgages, aren't able to effectively lobby the way full time paid lobbyists (with expense accounts!) are?
Which is why the 40 hour work week and dog-eat-dog economy seem to really suit those representatives just fine. No one has time or energy to make full use of representative democracy, unfortunately, except for some of the well off with resources to spare.
The problem being that if you're in a job with standard hours, the hour a day you have to spend on advocacy happens during the time your representatives and their staffers are not available.
I have trouble imagining a realistic job (in the USA, anyway) that wouldn't allow you to take 20 minutes for a phone call during business hours or get a free afternoon every month or two.
And at least half of your advocacy will consist of writing and research and recruiting other citizens to your cause - all of which can be done just as easily outside of normal business hours.
Uh, I used to be a cashier at McDonald's (reasonable job? you decide), I can tell you that they would never have let me wander off to use the phone for 20 minutes randomly, other than at my lunch break, which I needed to use to, y'know, eat lunch.
You get to do a bit more than that, though few ever do.
Making full use of representative democracy means continuously contacting your representative, not leaving them alone until you're convinced they'll act in your interests, and not leaving your friends/family/community alone until you've got as many other people as you can badgering your representative just as much. It's very time consuming and won't work at all if there aren't enough people with the same problem but, in the case of the author of this article, the relevant problem is quite widespread.