If we the people wanted something different, we would be voting differently. The fact that we continue to vote for the same incumbents means they are doing what we want.
See gerrymandering. See abstention rates and voter apathy.
Politics, like any system, can be gamed. Considering the incentives and interests at play, it is no surprise that it is. Taking into account how long these systems or similar have been in place, it shouldn’t be surprising that efficient tactics and strategies have been devised and refined over time.
Also considering how uneducated most of us are when it comes to politics, it is no surprise that most of us fall continuously fall for age old tactics and strategies.
Regarding "we the people", I personally do not come from nor live in the US. In the country I come from, people chose to do exactly what you suggest and vote for someone new. They eschewed both traditional parties, did not fall into the extremes' traps, and elected… the underdog!
Or so they thought. It seems they hate him now. He did get reelected, but by less than 40% of the people who could vote if they cared to or believed it would change anything.
Nothing new under the sun, really. I’m pretty sure we’d find the same patterns at play in Athen’s Boule and Ancient Rome.
But hey, "with every mistake we must surely be learning".
In case it wasn’t clear, I have personally entirely given up on both my fellow citizens and my home country’s (a liberal democracy as well) politics.
Yes, that's true. (And the Senate is no different.) What does it mean?
I think it means that people do not realize the actual problem. They don't see the two facts you cite as at odds with each other or connected to each other at all. But they are. The reason why Congress can have such a low approval rating while incumbency reelection rates remain high are that people think it's all those other members of Congress who are the problem--if only everyone would listen to their members of Congress, all that stuff would get fixed. They don't realize that, if you send someone to Congress to fix something, and it doesn't get fixed, you need to send someone else. You can't keep allowing the incumbents to hide behind "it's not me, it's all those others" forever.
> Yes, that's true. (And the Senate is no different.) What does it mean?
Red voters tend to live in red seats & states, blue voters tend to live in blue seats and states.
This is a tautology. It doesn't change anything I said.
I still think it's the most intuitive way to describe the first-order explanation for why people are happy with their specific representatives, but not Congress as a whole.