No? No. Democracy, functional or not, has no direct determining power on what candidates cater to. What democracy does is select the winning candidate, regardless of who the candidate caters to.
We may be a flawed democracy with candidates that cater to the elites, but we’re still a democracy and we still pick the winner.
This may come as a surprise to you, but yes, in a democracy the people are to blame for who gets elected.
The Democrats could have run a turd as a candidate with the slogan “it’ll be a shit show” and I’d still have voted for them with no regrets, because I understand that fascism is an existential threat. If the Democrats are to blame in any way, it’s because they didn’t try to get people to understand that OH WAIT THEY DID.
Should the Democrats have run a better candidate and a better campaign? Obviously yes. Is it their fault that voters were willing to let a fascist win? Not even a little.
Yes, obviously not everyone thinks fascism is an existential threat. Which is probably one of our greatest failures as a society, in terms of education.