Well, the United States was never conceived as a democracy. Women, natives, slaves and the poor gained nothing in the American Revolution, which only benefited the elites and, to an extent, the middle class. Alexander Hamilton, one of the Founding Fathers, believed that the government must ally itself not with all Americans, but with the richest elements of society to make itself strong. The British throne was merely replaced with an American elite.

This is why the US elites would never allow the people to pick their president. At the Constitutional Convention, Hamilton suggested a president and Senate chosen for life. Delegate Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts warned that “the people are uninformed and would be misled by a few designing men,” while delegate George Mason of Virginia even went so far as to argue that “it would be as unnatural to refer the choice of a proper character for chief Magistrate to the people, as it would, to refer a trial of colors to a blind man...”