Princeton study: U.S. no longer an actual democracy

[DanTex]

69. Self-labelled is meaningless.

North Korea is not actually a democratic republic, no matter what it calls itself.

The whole "democracy/republic" talking point is mostly the domain of right-wing internet trolls. You're not going to find actual historians or political scientists worrying about this very much. The fact that the government is run by elected representatives rather than direct referendum doesn't mean that a system is not a democracy. The terms have become more or less synonymous.

Particularly when discussing issues like this OP, which correctly points out that the fact that US policy correlates highly with the wishes of the wealthy, and not very much with overall opinion of the electorate, excusing this situation by saying "but we're not a democracy, we're a republic" is just plain dumb. The point is that each citizen is supposed to have equal say in the decisions made by the government, but that is not the case in the status quo.