Are they though? The founding fathers had the same belief that "the people are retarded" yet these founding fathers were really nothing more than oligarchs and elites who set up a country to specifically allow for the people to be overruled. The anti-democratic institutions they set up are the senate, electoral college, and the supreme court which just recently have given us such lovely & intelligent presidents like George W Bush & Donald Trump, the senate routinely kills good legislation that would help people regardless of who's in charge. Oh and these 2 anti-democratic institutions decide who interpretes the constitution. Which is how we get rulings like money being speech and corporations being people. The country would be involved in far fewer foreign conflicts, would have single-payer healthcare by now, would have legal marijuana and release all non-violent drug offenders if the people got what they wanted.