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Which side has the actual ability to forcefully implement their desired policies over a large population?

Both.

Do you really suppose so? I suppose it's technically possible for both to try, but imagine the resistance one side would be met with.

The side with the real power - the voters. You can blame businesses or activists or interest groups or governments or whatever but America still has a democracy and American people actually do choose the outcomes they get. You personally might not want them, but most of your fellow Americans either do want them or succumb to some personal greed to make them happen.

I disagree very much. The fact that concentrated interests win out over dispersed interests is not some failure of the population to educate itself and vote hard enough. It's an extremely basic game theoretical inevitability.

Exactly. See Mancur Olson, "The Logic of Collective Action".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action

No. The electorate chooses from a set of outcomes that are chosen long before they get a chance to vote on any of them. The political process starts a very long time before a typical citizen gets to vote.

Thinking that the political process begins and ends with voting is one of the key components of despair and cynicism in a democracy.

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