It's at the very least debatable. It always has been, viz the entire Internet smart people brigade trotting out the "It's not a democracy, it's a republic" trop

It's at the very least debatable. It always has been, viz the entire Internet smart people brigade trotting out the "It's not a democracy, it's a republic" trope. But even if we set this aside, we can certainly question if an institution like the electoral college doesn't deliberately move power from the people to the ruling group. We can question if the extreme form of gerrymandering we practice around here doesn't remove power from the people. We can debate Citizens United. We can debate the existence of blatantly partisan media, and the monoculture of media owners. We can debate a regime that has clearly abandoned ethical delineations, and that values loyalty over competence. All of these, individually, chip away at democracy. The question is if together they've chipped away enough that we aren't one any more. (My current assessment is that we still have a small window to turn this around, but it's closing. It's open wider than in Hungary, it's less wide open than in Germany or France)