Pure democracy is populism (dêmos is Ancient Greek for “ordinary citizens”). The innovation is institutions that slow democracy down and filter it through legislature, courts, and agencies. The media, too, is meant to have a countervailing effect—people with domain expertise who can say, “Let’s interrogate the issue before banning immigrants from certain countries, removing grizzlies off endangered species lists, adding a citizenship question to the census, or restricting access to birth control because people in power at that moment decide it’s a good idea.”
