At some point a democracy is so flawed it stops being a democracy in any meaningful sense. The stuff I mentioned exists on a spectrum that includes “democracy” in Russia.

I ultimately agree. It’s not some black or white thing. And Russia is clearly not a democracy, but an autocracy. Some countries have better and stronger democracy than others. The US actually has a pretty strong democracy index, at the high end of “flawed democracy.” We clearly have shit we need to improve, but still a democracy. And the fact that we have an electoral system to elect the POTUS is not one of the reasons ours is flawed.

If you define democracy as a state where people can change things if they all band together, then every country in history has been a democracy because people have always had the theoretical option to band together and overthrow their government by force.

If we are being unnecessarily pedantic, I didn’t say this. I said it’s a government.