You're right. Change the words "they were pushed" to "they chose". There's your agency.

> How about people have principles and don't change them to chase audience/money/fame, eh?

You assume that "having principles" means having your principles, and that for someone to disagree must mean they are unprincipled and simply chasing money/audience/fame. This kind of attitude comes across as incredibly arrogant and un-self-aware, and people/voters en masse want nothing to do with it.

The reality is that many millions of people are principled, and they simply have different principles.

For example, "opposing views should be aired and discussed" is a principle widely held by many millions of voters that the left has had an incredibly hard time understanding, respecting, and digesting.

I suspect the people that really think that are a small minority. "The South was right, black people are subhuman and needed to be taken care of by slave owners" is not going to be a popular discussion topic, for example. Or suggesting that Hitler was right about how people should be treated in Europe.