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From 18th century America to today, democracy has been pure fantasy. The American revolution was little more than operating a similar system under new management. Everything changed but stayed the same.
Government by "the people" was no different than under monarchal or autocratic rule. Constitutional provisions are whatever government does or does not do in whatever way it wishes. Ordinary people had no say then or now. They're entirely left out by design.
They don't govern. They are governed. The supreme law of the land, in fact, was a huge flop. Bill of Rights provisions enacted in 1891 made little difference for ordinary folks. Privileged ones wanted them for themselves.
John Adams said government should be run by "the rich, the well born, and the able." According to John Jay, America's first Supreme Court chief justice, the nation should be governed by people who owned it. It's been that way from inception.
Madison is wrongfully called "the Father of the Constitution." In Philadelphia, he was practically a nobody compared to others there.
Besides later becoming America's fourth president, he was best known for having kept detailed notes. From them, we know what happened.
A year after the Constitution was adopted, he said he wasn't among those who thought it was a "faultless work." Not at all. Given conflicting personal and states' interests, it was the best framers could agree on at the time.
Ten years later, he became extremely critical about how the document was written. None of the founders called the Constitution a glorious achievement. They went along because it was better than nothing.
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