I'll answer your last question first. There is no way you can have democracy if a primary consideration for office is immense personal wealth. But this link gives me hope:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070809/us_nm/usa_politics_grassroots_dc

I am one of the many who think Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama are just Bush-lite. Nothing will change whoever wins.

As for John Dewey. Several comments from your link give the idea: "Dewey’s deeply ingrained sense of social justice". "He recognized that freedom implies both negative freedom, or freedom from constraint, as well as positive freedom, or freedom for something". "Darwinian thinking greatly influenced Dewey’s philosophy. It was where he first acquired the notion that a human being or community is like a highly complex natural organism that must function within its environment". "Dewey explicitly rejected "Social Darwinism" with its self-serving and antidemocratic rhetoric about the survival of the fittest. The question is always, fit for what? Dewey learned from Huxley that even laissez faire economists must weed their garden if they want lovely flowers". "We can create a world where everyone is fit to survive and thrive, not just those who excel at crude capitalism". "As a neo-Darwinian, Dewey knows the key to survival is diversity not homogeneity".