The Founding Fathers hated and feared actual democracy and constructed the U.S. system of governance in order to prevent democracy from ever existing here, and here’s a thread of them saying so:

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.” -John Adams

"Too many... love pure democracy dearly. They seem not to consider that pure democracy, like pure rum, easily produces intoxication, and with it a thousand mad pranks and fooleries.” -John Jay, First Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

"A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way." -Fisher Ames

"It is one of the evils of democratical governments, that the people, not always seeing and frequently misled, must often feel before they can act right; but then evil of this nature seldom fail to work their own cure." -George Washington

"Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." -James Madison

"Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments." -Alexander Hamilton

“A simple democracy is the devil's own government." -Benjamin Rush

"Democracy, will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes, and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure and every one of these will soon mold itself into a system of subordination of all the...

moral virtues, and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit, and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few." -John Adams

“Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.” -James Madison

And the system is still functioning just as designed.

“Economic elites and organized interest groups play a substantial part in affecting public policy, but the general public has little or no independent influence." https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-theories-of-american-politics-explained