Yes, the people can be blamed and that’s exactly the point: legitimacy.

There are issues with direct democracy, though. You just cannot expect regular people to be informed enough to make good decisions on everything. And some things like protecting minorities are especially hard with direct democracy.

Electing representatives through a sort of vibe check, who then consult experts, is actually a pretty good compromise. This principle also has pretty high legitimacy, but just generally makes more informed decisions.

Democracy has incredible legitimacy. Anything else we have come up with so far was usually legitimized using religion or simply by violence. Both kinda meh.

I think it’s going to be hard to beat democracy in that respect.