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No, we are not any kind of democracy at the federal level, & were not intended to be. There is only one area of the federal government that is even linked to a 50%+1 popular vote democratic activity, the STATE elections of our federal officials. The president is still elected by the electoral congress, not the popular vote.
Despite the best efforts of many "progressives" over the last 100 years or so, we are still a representative republic, per our Constitution. Our Constitution still requires a super-majority in both houses of congress (or a super-majority of delegates to a Constitutional Convention) and ratification by a super-majority of state legislatures to be amended. As long as those safeguards are in place, we will not became a democracy
Changing what a lot of people call us does not change what we are, no matter how bad some people want it to be so.
BTW DA, not everyone thinks of "rule of law, free and fair elections, and civil liberties" when they hear democracy. Those of us who truly understand the meaning of the concept think of mob rule & instability.Our founders did nothing of the sort in relation to democracy.
Before the 20th century the federal government even taught military officers & enlisted men the difference between a democracy & a republic, along with the dangers of the former & advantages of the latter.
I know what democracy really means. I stated this, and I don't like literal democracy. Almost everyone agrees that the voters shouldn't decide everything. However, democracy, like countless other terms, is generally used in a non-literal context, as a shorthand for "liberal democracy" or "democratic republic."
Your parallel with Marxism falls apart when you remember the Soviets intended, promised & advertised a "Marxist" state. (That they were not able to deliver on that anymore than most of their other promises is beside the point, and the subject of another thread.)
That does nothing to change the fact that what went on in the Soviet Union was almost the opposite of much of Marx's theories. By the technical definition of Marxism, the USSR was not Marxist. There was government, disparity in wealth, and property (albeit whether government owned property constitutes private property just in the hands of one group is another matter) The country also billed itself as democratic, but we can both agree that it most certainly wasn't.