Republics are democracies. They're just not direct democracies.

This might also help: https://mises.org/wire/stop-saying-were-republic-not-democra...

No, republic is just a form of government, which may or may not be democratic. People’s Republic of China, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran are prime exemples.

In this context, "democracy" is used in the broad sense, meaning the codified national value of self-government by the population. The distinction that there are elected representatives rather than direct votes isn't relevant.

If we are being needlessly pedantic, the traditional US definition of a "republic" is a democracy, but just not a direct democracy (I'm not aware of any modern countries that are), which I suspect is what you were trying to point out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic#United_States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy

Even more Article 4, Section 4 of the constitution:

>The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government

https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/inte...

This was probably more necessary when "democracy" usually referred to Athenian democracy, which obviously doesn't scale much beyond a city state.