It stopped being a republic in fact a long time ago. Anyway most people call it a democracy and have for a long time, most people have no inkling of the difference between a democracy and a republic.
Where exactly do we stand? We’re not exactly a dictatorship; we still have free elections. Yet we have two major parties who take turns being in power. So do we really have free choices in elections? I wonder about these things sometimes.
I stopped wondering a few years ago. And political scientists are openly referring to our political processes as more resembling an oligarchy than a participatory form of government. Check it out for yourself:
And we have the nameless, faceless bureaucracy (separation of powers problem...anyone?) regardless.
As long as we pick the candidate of their choice it appears, we'll see how the convention goes to see if that's true or not.
I personally think the elections are merely for show, it doesn’t matter which party is nominally in power we keep heading down the road to perdition.