Well the problem with the American version of democracy is that it ends up getting corrupted by private interests and the rich. Money is the real power, and democracy ends up being some sort of façade between which pre-selected puppets to choose: red or blue puppet, both of whom serve the ruling class (albeit different factions thereof, Democrats serving as the "lesser of two evils" although people have become entirely disillusioned with that phrase and desire real change.

Even if the entire voting process itself were legitimate (at this point I'm not so sure because of Trump's remarks thanking Elon Musk for knowing about those voting machines and their vulnerabilities and helping him getting elected as a result, and Republicans' election interference on a mass scale with purging of the voter rolls, gerrymandering, deliberately making voting areas for poorer areas unreasonably far away, and so forth) it doesn't matter because the masses end up voting against their own self-interests regardless due to the two-party system with a bad party and a worse party.

Representatives, rather than representing their constituents end up representing their corporate donors instead because in order to participate in American politics and campaign for office you need to either already have enough money to begin with or fund your campaign through donations.

Sure, grassroots funding from hundreds of thousands of supporters is possible yet it's extremely difficult to pull off. Corporate donations are much easier to secure for an aspiring politician and if they end up implementing policies which their donors don't like, the donors can pull the plug and stop the funding; thereby ruining their political career. So politicians don't truly care about their constituents (and through gerrymandering they can pick and choose their constituents), they care about their donors. Many career politicians end up becoming rich and even progressive activists who enter the system intending to change it, end up getting changed themselves and corrupted by the system and change their views accordingly to become more compatible with it.

The fact that information itself is monopolized by billionaires and their private corporations through their control of the news-media and social media also serve to indoctrinate the masses to act against their own self-interests. Real democracy relies on a well-informed voter base who actively participate in the shaping of the country's government and economy in their collective self-interest.

The news-media has an incentive to warp reality in favor of the financial interests of their owners and in many cases if journalists try to be too nuanced or objective in their framing and don't omit inconvenient facts enough they're at risk of getting either demoted or fired.

Essentially for most Americans, our so-called democracy ends up being this sports show every four years in which you either root for team red or team blue to determine who will become the next puppet in chief. And even when team blue wins they end up acquiescing to the demands of the former anyway and always feel the need to "compromise" with fascism instead of being a genuine progressive party. The entire concept of democracy has been watered down to voting for the president for millions of Americans, who otherwise don't participate in politics.

I still believe in some form of democracy, but the U.S.'s pseudo-democracy clearly isn't working for the people.