E.A.Poe had similar concerns. He called the then hypothetical president “King Mob”. On the other hand, he was a fan of Andrew Jackson.

Honestly, Trump isn’t that much dumber than most presidents. He actually understood how to break the system, mostly because he wasn’t clouded by love for it. I wouldn’t call him a mastermind, but he has better political instincts than anyone. He’s an idiot, but he’s fully aware what he’s doing.

implying that an election to choose a single representative for 300 million people with a 2-horse race is particularly democratic

Conversely, as democracy is perverted by moneyed interests, government will more and more resemble the will of the short sighted shareholders obsessed with the next quarterly gains. Leading to a useful idiot government selling the country to corporations through regulatory capture and privatization.

That’s what happened in the real world. Not the will of the broader populace, but the will of the few people who pay the politicians in charge of both parties.

Mencken had a lot of good one liners

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.