Lobbyists aren't necessarily bad. They're _supposed_ to be there to educate those who make decisions. But they go far far beyond that and we need to regulate them massively.
If you put the blame on the lobbyists then no regulator can save you, because you forgive corruptable regulators.
Republicanism (supposedly) offers a solution to alleged instability, rashness, impetuosity, and social and political tyranny of democratic politics because it recognizes that the majority does not equal the whole of the community. US citizens elect what are basically proxies for power, but those proxies have only a facade of accountability. Instead, the elected enter a sphere where they ultimately control the institutions that control life for everyone in the US. It allows them to erect sets of rules that are never uniformly applied, it thrashes violently against efforts to combat such corruption, and have known for centuries that ultimately the voters are immaterial to the perpetuation of this system.
Absolutely no one in the US does any kind of governing whatsoever. The chickenshit house and senate AND executive branch punt lawmaking into the Supreme Court. Laws are all written by the Praetorian guard of lobbyists, piece of shit attorneys, and NGOs/think tanks. The judiciary exists to rubber stamp plutocrats’ agenda, nothing more. Binding arbitration ensures that the “deplorables” are forced into a parallel legal system, which robs them of the opportunity to take companies to court.