As I have argued before, we don't have democracy as the people doesn't rule (don't you begin talking about 'true' democracy, it should just be called democracy!). We have something that could be called constitutional popular oligarchy or something like that.
The politicians are the oligarchs. They have their own little assembly where they make the decisions for the country. Are they 'the people' as meant in the word 'democracy'? Or are they more similar to the 'the few' as meant in the word 'oligarchy'? Well, I'll let you think about that for a moment.

That said I don't think we have much option right now, and I think it is important to use the few times we do have an impact on the decisionmaking. I just don't agree with the label 'Democracy' for our systems.