You can find examples in almost any election of a heavily-funded initiative being defeated at the polls. Here in California, a recent example I can think of off the top of my head is the continual defeat of policies and politicians backed by charter school advocates, including in the Nov. 2018 election.
> It seems to me that democracy has been hijacked in the U.S.
Elected officials in the U.S. are in their positions because voters put them there. Unless you're claiming that substantial election fraud took place, you can't claim that democracy isn't working just because it didn't produce the result that you agree with.
In circumstances of elections is best to talk about probabilities and concentrate on what is normative.
...you can't claim that democracy isn't working just because it didn't produce the result that you agree with.
I claim that American democracy is broken because it consistently produces results that are not in the the long term interests of the nation and are not done in the interest of the people. There are lots of reasons to support my belief but none of them have anything to do with me personally not liking the results it produces. Indeed, I'm quite satisfied with the results of the last Presidential election cycle. My candidate won.
I might be wrong in my belief that American democracy is broken.
It seems to me that democracy has been hijacked in the U.S. From my perspective, regardless of reason or solution it remains that corporations are not paying enough for the maintenance of society. Given that we have had free elections for some time it appears that the answer is more complex than just saying in theory we can vote out the scoundrels. In actuality this hasn't occurred and this suggests that something is wrong with the system.