> To have a true democracy, free elections are not the only necessity. You also need wide representation of popular ideas among the candidates of the election; and you need the winning candidate to at least take steps towards enacting the policies that they were elected for.
Not sure that this is ever a prerequisite of a "true democracy". Campaign promises can only be successfully delivered if the legislature allows it, and the members of the legislature are also democratically elected. We do have a wide representation of popular ideas in Congress (see: members in Congress ranging all the way from AOC to Rand Paul), it's just that some ideas have not quite found broad bipartisan support across the large heterogenous polity that is the United States. The bar to pass law at the Federal level is extremely high: it needs to pass 2 houses + signed by the President, all separately, yet (in varying forms) democratically elected.
> For an example of the former, compare Gallup poll results on public healthcare to the positions of candidates in any election so far - tough at least 48% if the population has been in favor of a public option for a decade, there has been no candidate for presidential elections that had even offered that.
Support plunges when the polled respondents are asked if they would support the funding strategy (higher taxes) [1]
> For the latter, again Healthcare can prove a useful example, comparing Obama's campaign promises of drug price negotiation to the final resulting law proposal, which essentially had no change that could affect the insurance companies' bottom lines.
You'd have to reconcile why the same voters are voting for members of the House of Representatives and Senate that have opposed Obama's agenda. Both political branches of government (Executive and Legislative) are democratically elected.
All this being said, there is a public option that has passed in the state of Washington. [2] San Francisco also has a public option [3], and the state of California is currently reckoning with lukewarm popularity for a statewide single payer system [4].
Not sure that this is ever a prerequisite of a "true democracy". Campaign promises can only be successfully delivered if the legislature allows it, and the members of the legislature are also democratically elected. We do have a wide representation of popular ideas in Congress (see: members in Congress ranging all the way from AOC to Rand Paul), it's just that some ideas have not quite found broad bipartisan support across the large heterogenous polity that is the United States. The bar to pass law at the Federal level is extremely high: it needs to pass 2 houses + signed by the President, all separately, yet (in varying forms) democratically elected.
> For an example of the former, compare Gallup poll results on public healthcare to the positions of candidates in any election so far - tough at least 48% if the population has been in favor of a public option for a decade, there has been no candidate for presidential elections that had even offered that.
Support plunges when the polled respondents are asked if they would support the funding strategy (higher taxes) [1]
> For the latter, again Healthcare can prove a useful example, comparing Obama's campaign promises of drug price negotiation to the final resulting law proposal, which essentially had no change that could affect the insurance companies' bottom lines.
You'd have to reconcile why the same voters are voting for members of the House of Representatives and Senate that have opposed Obama's agenda. Both political branches of government (Executive and Legislative) are democratically elected.
All this being said, there is a public option that has passed in the state of Washington. [2] San Francisco also has a public option [3], and the state of California is currently reckoning with lukewarm popularity for a statewide single payer system [4].
[1] https://apnews.com/4516833e7fb644c9aa8bcc11048b2169
[2] https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...
[3] https://healthysanfrancisco.org/
[4] https://newrepublic.com/article/143650/killed-single-payer-c...