USA politics - no more loyal opposition
@Pat "in the US for awhile now" If you don't consider the 2010s to be 'democratic' then the US was never democratic. Political elites (alongside economic elites) have always manipulated the system to limit their accountability to the general public.
People with money and political connects always have more influence, that's the way nearly all societies work. But a continual, 95%-re-election rate? That's recent. And that's not a democracy. This has happened just during the past few decades. The US, historically, has had many periods of true populism -- the revolution, Lincoln, FDR, and to a lesser extent Carter and Reagan. What we have now is different.
And the US has never killed a million of its own citizens before. Without accountability. With the media being completely silent about it. That's different.
@DecaturNature
FYI...
Neither party is loyal and we haven't had a democracy in the US for awhile now. About 95% of all incumbents are kept in office at each election. This is not possible in a fair democracy, especially when the satisfaction rate among people towards Congress is in the low teens.
(I'm not saying the elections are fixed, it's the system that's fixed.)
PS - I don't know why you marked this with a CW. By marking something with CW just because it is about politics is like saying that there is something wrong with political speech -- like there is something wrong with free expression. That's anti-democratic.