America Is a Republic, Not a Democracy Is a Dangerous and Wrong Argument (2020)

> The House of Representatives was the "democratic" half

These are both wrong. “Democratic” and “Republican” aren’t conflicting goals; the US isn’t a democratic republic because it has separate sets of democratic and republican institutions.

It’s republican in that state office and political power are not private property the way they are in a monarchy, and its democratic in that the power of the government derives in theory from the consebt of thr governed, and because it has formal electoral institutions designed, loosely, to align those things in practice.

It is true that it is imperfectly democratic, and that this represents a compromise, but that's a compromise with being a federation of states, not with being a Republic. Its a federal democratic republic, where the first two (not the last two) are in tension.

> The 17th Amendment made the Senate almost as democratic as the House

Nowhere close. It made the Senate directly elected, but havigb officers directly elected vs appointed by another institution which is denocratically accountable doesn't make a body particularly more democratic, when the main reason it is imperfectly democratic is unequal (in reperesebted population) apportionment, which is not changed.

> It retains some republicanism in that senators are still not numbered by state population and have longer terms than representatives

Neither of those are “republican” features, and only the first reflects the federal vs democratic character of government. The staggering of terms between House, President. and Senate makes it less likely that a transitory change of popular mood causes a complete change of government, but that's neither republican nor federal more than democratic. Its a feature on a whole different axis.

Dont think it's a trend if nothing has changed in 110 years, almost half of the entire life of the republic.

Mentioning that "America is a Republic" may cost votes.