The problem of modern democracies is mostly not that the politicians are too detached from everyday life, isolated in their own class (this is a problem, but not the central one), the problem is the same as democracy's biggest advantage -- that for radical change, you need a huge consensus. Therefore, change happens only incrementally, because a sufficient number of people needs to go along with it.

It follows that radical solutions and solutions based on simple, clear positions (ethical, ideological, religious) will always be trumped by compromise. Shifts take a generation, and when a generation is still planning to proceed to a conceived goal and despairs because it is only half-way there after decades of political fights, the next generation may already have decided that it wants to proceed to another goal instead, and despairs about the stubborn old-timers who cling to their foolish dreams.

People tend to congregate with people from the same milieu and with people of similar opinions, that's one important reason why politicians seem so out-of-touch if we look at what they do from our personal vantage points - they simply have to incorporate view-points and interests that we never experienced personally and can dismiss as wrong / stupid / misguided in our personal environment.