Populism is just democracy taking the reigns back from the entrenched political establishment. There is nothing democratic about a social class of bureaucrats gatekeeping all political offices.
If anything, it seems to me that populism is necessary to overcome the local minimum that the political landscape settles in from time to time.
It's pretty hard to define what populism is; it's kind of a "know it when I see it" kind of definition for most commentators.
My best attempt at a definition would be a platform that denies known truths in favour of superficially popular positions. For example, claiming that tariffs don't increase prices, or that legal convictions are lies, or even that solid, established scientific evidence (like vaccines are safe and hugely effective or climate change is real) are untrue.
Populism is a political approach that seeks to represent the interests and voice of "ordinary people" against what is perceived as an elite or establishment. Populist movements often emphasize a direct connection between the leader and the people, bypassing traditional political institutions or parties, and claim to speak for the "common people" against corrupt or out-of-touch elites. Populism can appear across the political spectrum, taking different forms depending on the issues and ideologies within a given society.
This is likely to cause winners and losers to come out of the situation... and probably after time, the leaders end up becoming elites who become out of touch with the "common people" and the process is likely to repeat.
I think it is closer to Democracy than whatever the democrats seem to say - which they seem to define as: "whatever gives them the power to do what they want"
In the ideal, populism can be seen as a good example of democracy. In practice, voters just go off of feelings and "he said, she said", at which point it's not about the benefit of the people so much as whichever elites manage to wrest the conch this time. For the most part, the people themselves aren't well educated and able to understand what is actually to their benefit or not, even if they are college educated. Adding to that, people are bad at long-term thinking and focusing on multiple issues. In practice, the outcome is the same.
That is how populism has been branded as bad, to you. By your definition the most populist parties are the republicans and democrats ("denies known truths in favour of superficially popular positions").
