Unfortunately, the US as shown in 70's and 80's media never actually existed. We are absolutely not a united people, and since you've brought up helping the poor, we've argued on whether that's even an acceptable exercise of government power for at least a century now.
At its founding, the US truly was simply an alliance (confederation, to be precise) of 13 sovereign nations, and there was a LOT of extremely bitter fighting over the strength of the overall government vs the strength of the component states. Our first attempt - via the Articles of Confederation - actually failed miserably because the states were overwhelmingly more powerful than the government, and not one was willing to work for the betterment of the nation at the potential expense of local interests.
Thus, in 1787, we got together for a do-over, which led to such wonderful things as slaves counting as 3/5 population, a House whose membership was set by population, a Senate whose membership was set at 2 per state (and whose members were selected by individual state legislatures, NOT popular vote), and a President whose election wasn't necessarily determined by popular vote at all.
In fact, Congress bears a striking and deliberate similarity to the UK Parliament, in that you have a lower house selected by the populace, and an upper house selected (at the time) by our version of the aristocracy. It and the Presidency were both set up the way they were because in the 18th century, the national leadership believed that the common man had no business in politics, that it was the province of educated white male gentry and no one else. (If you don't believe me, read the Constitution, it's quite explicit on that.)
There was, however, a sharp divide that remains to this day on whether each state was equal no matter what or whether the states with greater populations should have more say. The electoral college was a compromise in that regard that grants smaller states a distinctly greater say in national elections than their population would suggest, but not as much as you see in the Senate.
I'm sure Doc is saying that that was the intention of the Founders, so that's how it must stay, but the fact is that the Constitution allows for changes, and over the last 229 years, there has been a major move toward populism, whether it be Lincoln's statement that this is a government 'of the people, for the people, and by the people' or the amendment that took the election of Senators *OUT* of the state legislatures' hands. The founders repeated again and again that the best defense against the breakdown of the democratic system is an informed electorate; unfortunately, the entrenched political parties are doing everything in their power to ensure that no informed electorate exists, which is why you have people actually believing Trump when he says that he never said that thing he was videotaped saying the day before.
The fact of the matter, however, is simply this: No political system that overrides the express will of the people in a free election can call itself democratic. That's why governors are based on popular vote, referendums are based on popular vote, and senators, representatives, and all other elections are based on popular vote. Literally the *ONLY* election in America NOT based on the popular vote is the Presidency, and as a result, 5 of our 45 presidents have managed to beat someone who won more votes than him. (Lincoln was the sixth president to not win the popular majority, but he was still the highest vote-getter at 39%.)
I thought the Electoral College was an archaic institution when I learned about it in school, I still thought it was idiotic to keep around when I was a Republican (!) voter in 2000 when it put Bush in office (my change of heart happened when he started talking about invading Iraq), and I see this year's election as just more proof of why it absolutely needs to go.
A government that ignores its people is by no stretch of the imagination of the people, for the people, or by the people.