Memes

POV: "Vote blue no matter who" crowd when their "Blue" candidate votes for war.

they want to have their cake and eat it too

Not.

Democracy: Greek, dēmos krátos, 'people' 'rule' or rule of the people.

The people do not rule in the US so it's not a democracy.

It's hard to define what the US is. It has some democratic elements. The people are allowed to elect representatives, both at the state and Federal level, and many people are allowed to vote directly for or against certain measures through ballot initiatives at the state level, although this varies from state to state. However, our Federal representatives in the House each represent well over 700,000 people. That is a very large number of people, especially compared to most other democracies. And because we have a winner-take-all system, people who did not vote for the winning candidate may feel underrepresented or not represented at all.

I think the classification that best fits the US is Plutocracy: ploûtos krátos, 'wealth' 'rule' or rule of the wealthy. Not only do the wealthiest have a significant amount of money to invest in political causes, lobbying representatives and directly influencing elections, but they also often have significant private corporate ownership interests and control, giving them a great deal of power over the economy and access to critical resources. Even democratically elected representatives tend to be quite wealthy, or at least much wealthier than the average American voter. And even if they don't start out much wealthier, they often end up much wealthier after their time in office.

Despite research having shown that our vote has virtually no effect on outcomes, many still want to believe.

And yet their vote means nothing.

It is a flawed Democracy. Lobbying money corrupts the government.