i think democracy has been replaced by populism

This is from Populism: A Very Short Introduction. In the book, they have the people, the elite and the general will.

More concretely, we define Populism as a thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic camps, “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite,” and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.

Unlike “thick-centered” or “full” ideologies (e.g., fascism, liberalism, socialism), thin-centered ideologies such as populism have a restricted morphology, which necessarily appears attached to and sometimes is even assimilated into—other ideologies. In fact, populism almost always appears attached to other ideological elements, which are crucial for the promotion of political projects that are appealing to a broader public. Consequently, by itself populism can offer neither complex nor comprehensive answers to the political questions that modern societies generate.

In many cases populists will combine different interpretations of the elite and the people, i.e., class, ethnicity, and morality. For example, contemporary American right-wing populists such as Sarah Palin and the Tea Party describe the elite as latte-drinking and Volvo-driving East Coast liberals; contrasting this, implicitly, to the real/common/native people who drink regular coffee, drive American-made cars, and live in Middle America (the heartland).

Pauline Hanson, leader of the right-wing populist One Nation party, would juxtapose the true people of rural Australia, proud of their British settler heritage, to the intellectual urban elite, who “want to turn this country upside down by giving Australia back to the Aborigines.”

For example, xenophobic populists in Europe often define the people in ethnic terms, excluding “aliens” (i.e., immigrants and minorities), but they do not argue that the elite are part of another ethnic group. They do argue, however, that the elite favors the interests of the immigrants over those of the native people.

For the anti-communist populists “the people” were the common and patriotic (“real”) Americans from the heartland, whereas “the elite” lived in the coastal areas, notably the Northeast, and covertly or overtly supported “un-American” socialist ideas. Linking populism to producerism, in which the pure people are squeezed between a corrupt elite above them and a racialized underclass below them, they accused the elite of mooching off the hard work of the people and of “redistributing” their wealth to the non-white underclass to stay in power.

While not a populist at heart, Nixon popularized the term “silent majority” as a reference to the majority of the (real) American people figuratively and literally silenced by the (liberal) elite.

In 1968 former Democratic governor George C. Wallace of Alabama ran as the candidate of the American Independent Party (AIP), winning almost 10 million votes, or 13.5 percent of those cast. Running essentially a single-issue campaign in defense of segregation, in which his producerist populism targeted both the African American poor below and the anti-segregationist white elites above, Wallace carried five states in the South.

In 1992 Texas billionaire Ross Perot would do even better, winning almost 20 million votes, 18.9 percent of the ballots cast. His “United We Stand, America” campaign combined a broad range of right-wing concerns and issues, such as the budget deficit and gun control, with moderate producerism and strong populism. Using folksy language to pit the pure heartland against the corrupt East Coast, Perot promised the (real) American people that he would “clean out the barn” in Washington.

While the main “enemy within” of right-wing populists has changed somewhat through time—for instance, the communists in the 1950s were replaced by the civil rights movement in the 1960s and the “activist judges” in the 1970s—the main socioeconomic and, even more important, sociocultural grievances have remained remarkably constant: “our way of life” is attacked by the “liberal elite” who use an oppressive (federal) state and a far too expensive and expansive welfare state to stifle the initiative and values of the people while providing “special privileges” to non-deserving minorities.

In contrast, the depiction of “the elite” has changed somewhat. While big business and politicians from the Northeast are still central to the populist discourse, an alleged cultural elite has become more prominent. In essence, this cultural “liberal elite” works through (higher) education, particularly the Ivy League universities, where they “pervert” the bureaucrats, judges, and politicians of the future with “un-American” ideas.

This is the why the right is on the rise right now. They all use the same playbook, same rhetoric. If they don't use it, they don't even get on the ballot, hence moderate politicians get pushed aside. And democracy has no failsafes to prevent that.

Also, this can be applied even outside of politics. Like, take incels, andrew tate and the like. They are the people, and the women are the elite, particularly liberal women/feminists.