What is Democracy? (#173; Topic Q)

Almost without fail, one hears the word Democracy uttered dozens of times every day. But, no one bothers to define what this word means. A couple of months ago, Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE), in an interview over NPR, chided President George W. Bush for simply equating democracy to voting. (Since my wife and I have a vacation condo in Delaware, we invariably pay attention to what Sen. Biden has to say.) According to Biden, democracy must have an independent judiciary and an independent legislature; otherwise, it would encourage an imperial presidency. Marvellous. Then, the Supreme Court decided a case attempting to rein in presidential power, which prompted a former Justice Department offical known for his creative definition of torture now at Berkeley, to label the Court an imperial judiciary. Now that the legislature has recessed for the summer, many have dubbed the one just ended a "do nothing" Congress. Utterly confused, on the eve of the Independence Day, I went to our retirement community's library and borrowed a couple of books on the subject. Kevin Phillips's book has a provocative title, American Theocracy (#167); understandably, the word democracy does not even merit a mention in this 462-page book. How about Sean Wilentz's The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (2005, 1044 pages)? On the very first page of his preface, Wilentz admitted that "Democracy is a troublesome word." He went on to say that "early patriot James Otis defined democracy in its purest and simplest form as 'a government of all over all,' ... 'where the rulers were the ruled.'" Is purest the same as the ideal? Must be, since, further down, he stated that "Today, democracy in America means enfranchisement ... of the entire adult citizenry." So, the right to vote is it. Then he hastened to add that "By that standard, the American democracy of the mid-nineteenth century was hardly a democracy at all: women of all classes and colors lacked political and civil rights." He then cited Tocqueville, whose book I managed to borrow from our local library. Let me read it and see what light it can shed to my query: What is democracy?