California allows any coalition to initiate referendums and bring the vote to the people, if that's not democratic, I don't know what is.
Edit: And it's a bit insulting to say California voters don't have the wherewithal to digest political advertisements and make their own decisions.
The wisdom in the joke is that both are correct from their own point of view but as a matter of trust, you want to go with the point of view with the person who has a better view of the bigger picture.
Representative forms of government have always relied on the chosen representative spending their time and energy to understand an issue and its relative merits and, with the understanding of what the people who elected them value, choosing the right path. They are "in the crow's nest" in this scenario.
Imagine a hospital scenario where the doctor announces your symptoms over the public address system and then all of the other patients in the hospital vote on your course of treatment. And the patients are voting while treatment company representatives walk around and tell misleading stories about how effective their particular drug or therapy is in treating what ever ailment has just been announced over the PA.
Of course in theory you choose your doctor based on the fact that they spent 12 years studying for their certification in medicine and perhaps their experience in treating cases like yours. You don't go to the hospital to hear what the other patients think you should do.
But even in this ridiculous scenario, the other patients can be sincere in their desire that you get better, and so will passionately advocate for vendor X's treatment if they believe that vendor X has the best treatment.
And as a result, your care stops being about finding the right treatment to a disease or condition, and becomes convincing the largest number of patients that an answer could be the right answer.
From my perspective, living as I do in California for many years, my perspective is that I don't think the people of California are well served by this state of affairs.
On top of this, voters don’t even need to digest political advertisements. The state sends a booklet that describes all the proposition, the pro position, rebuttals to the pro position, the con position and rebuttals to the con position, plus how much money was spent from each side, plus who made those contributions. All there, in black and white, in your mailbox.
We might, because professional political strategists (who advise campaigns on what works) tend also to be involved in the firms that do this work, and direct their clients to spend money with entities in which they have a financial interest. It is an industry which is absolutely rife with the kinds of conflicts of interest that wouldn't be tolerated for long elsewhere.
And its also an industry where people very often fail upward due to connections rather than succeeding on their track record.