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.