"If the people are not exercising power directly with no intermediaries, it's confusing to use the term."
Confusing or not, it is common. It is as close to universal as it gets.
"Liberalism is not a democratic ideology. There's been an unfortunate ~2 century trend of liberals trying to cloak this inherently elitist ideology with democratic legitimation."
Maybe I shouldn't add another issue but it sure sounds like you are equating what Rauch calls liberalism to liberals of the Democratic party. I'm pretty sure they are not at all the same thing.
"Using "liberal democracy" to mean representative government is like saying "non-democracy democracy.""
And that is how it is used.
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/government-type/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy
"If the people are not exercising power directly with no intermediaries, it's confusing to use the term."
Confusing or not, it is common. It is as close to universal as it gets.
"Liberalism is not a democratic ideology. There's been an unfortunate ~2 century trend of liberals trying to cloak this inherently elitist ideology with democratic legitimation."
Maybe I shouldn't add another issue but it sure sounds like you are equating what Rauch calls liberalism to liberals of the Democratic party. I'm pretty sure they are not at all the same thing.