[wongarsu]

Well, I would have said that the base criteria for a democracy is that the government is an extension of the will of the people (hence the name). But we can agree that Power separation and Representativity are reasonable proxies. But the US isn't well set up for representativity at all. Without going into the finer issues like gerrymandering or the more controversial things like the electoral college, the core issue is that a first-past-the-post system means there can only be two meaningful parties. So you can only really have two sides, when real issues often are far more nuanced than that.