The US is a plutocracy. It's in no sense a working democracy. There's a public voting circus every couple of years, but policy - which is the only thing that really matters in politics - is largely defined by Wall St, the Fed, and by mil-ind corporate lobbying groups.
All of the above are politically unaccountable and legally untouchable. See for example the ridiculous excuses made to prevent the passage of:
This sort of thing is said all the time, but we do see significant policy changes based on voting, such as the switch to Barack Obama from George W. Bush. It's not clear to me that the corporations drove that in a major way. Another example is Herbert Hoover to Franklin Roosevelt. I imagine you wouldn't suggest that the corporations wanted the Socialist ideas proposed by Roosevelt.
Just because an election or a vote doesn't go your way, or the government doesn't shift dramatically every election, doesn't mean the nation does not have a working democracy.
The problem is that "governance by ordinary people" is not really on the table as an option. Governance by popular vote might be, but given how short-sighted and easily swayed the average loosely aware citizen is, the result is more likely to be "governance by demagogues and whoever has the most advertising dollars".
