Depends how you frame the democratic outcomes - if the 4 neighbors all vote on it then a new housing proposal will fail but I don’t see that as particularly democratic. If the entire state of California voted on it (because to a small proportional extent it affects everyone), it may pass. And that is hopefully the trajectory we are in, people are electing state representatives that are starting to pass by-right legislation, plus there will hopefully be related ballot measures in the next few years. It is democratic.

The outcome of the democratic process is respected in the sense that it controls what happens. There’s no reason to respect in the larger sense of thinking the outcome is just simply because it is democratic. Majorities can act, and often do act, unjustly.

It is a fundamental principle of American democracy that the people ought to exercise thier power virtuously and it is entirely appropriate to chide them when they do not. Nothing in the “progressive left” philosophy is to the contrary as far as I’m aware.

The simplistic notion that whatever a bare majority of the people want is good went out of fashion more than 2000 years ago.

I think the conflict here is between democracy at different levels (street/neighborhood-level democracy vs. city-level vs, state-level). Not democracy vs. anarchy or authoritarianism.