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It is more nuanced than that. Technically, the constitution establishes a federal democratic republic form of government:
- federal: union of 50 states
- republic: ultimate power held by the people and their elected representatives AND has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch
- democratic: governance by officials elected by voting of the population
Representation in a republic may or may not be freely elected by the general citizenry. In our case, representation is via electing representatives of the people, i.e. democratic.
I am not yet sure why there are these soundbites of "democracy" vs "republic", since we are both.
One interesting feature of our setup is while we are a democracy, we also have inalienable rights that the majority cannot vote away.
Personally, I get suspicious when elected leaders start talking about the powers they need to fight the "threats to our democracy".
Worth revisiting is the CGP Grey video "Rules for Rulers": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
The whole “We’re a republic not a democracy,” lie isn’t about that at all. It dates to only WWII. Specifically, it was coined by America First’s Boake Carter as quip in response to Roosevelt’s talk about “the defense of democracies” and “the arsenal of democracy” while arguing that it was perfectly fine for the nazis to run wild in Europe. This phrase continued on with John Birch Society, where it morphed into its sophomoric partisan quip and excuse for unpopular minority rule it is today.
When anyone utters this phrase today, it’s a tell that they literally have no idea what any of the words they say actually mean.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/opinion/aoc-crenshaw-repu...
I'd argue it's a tell that they don't understand the history of the term or the perception of it held by those who disagree with them.
For most people who say it, I believe "we're a republic, not a democracy" means "we're not majority rule, there are structures in place to protect the interests of the minority". This is why they don't trot out the phrase every time the word "democracy" is used. It's a rebuttal to specific instances where people invoke "democracy" to mean "most people I know disagree with you, so your opinion doesn't matter".
Maybe I'm projecting my own views here, but I generally agree with what I believe people are trying to convey when they use the phrase. I don't use it myself, because I know it's not an effective way to communicate my position - not because it's technically not a true statement.
For what it's worth, there's also more nuance to the word "democracy" than you seem to be presenting here. At the time of the founding, it basically meant "rule by popular vote", and was pretty much a synonym for "mob rule". A large part of the US system was explicitly designed to work around the shortcomings of direct democracy.
But even this is a misunderstanding of the terms as even (mis)understood in 18th century. Representative (i.e. indirect) democracy doesn't inherently provide any defense of the minority. It's literally just a scaling solution. Nor does the constitution as drafted provide any protections to a minority. In fact, this lack of protections was one of the biggest arguments against ratification, and directly resulted in the Bill of Rights to address some of these issues. Even judicial review of unconstitutional laws didn't exist until 1803, and arguably is extra textual.
What's left is split a legislative and executive, a legislature that is a poor copy of the House of Lords and the House of Commons, and an idiosyncratic points system that 248 years later has not only yielded three unpopular presidents, but elevates whims of a few voters in depopulated states. None of that protects a minority from an abusive majority, nor does it make an affirmative case about why the majority rule should not apply. Far from protecting the minority, electoral college actually enables minority rule. The same can be demonstrated with gerrymandering and legislative seats. A real concern for minority representation balanced with majority rule would address these obvious failures, but it doesn't.
Even the Wish.com House of Lords is joke as originally conceived, since it empowered state legislatures rather than the people of the state. It's a very concept that is an opposition to the very idea of a common nation, but not alien to the idea of a confederation. Now this may have made sense in a 18th century drawing room, but hasn't made sense over 160 years. They thought they were making a European Union, but that's not what developed.
The American constitution may have been great 250 years ago, but it's not by any modern standard today.
Probably as some weird way to further the divide between left and right. It is really popular to demonize the other side because it's a very effective way to get people riled up enough to vote.
Even if that were true, it's not really up to the people who intended it to be something else 200 years ago. It's now on us to figure out what kind of nation we want to be.
Too bad we seem to have decided to just ignore the whole thing (except when it suits us, of course)
Approval voting doesn't have this problem. When there's a clear winner, it's obvious and you can get back to business.
There are plenty of functional democracies like Germany, in which the votes are counted by the end of the day and the results dont change by several percentage points during the next few weeks after the election.