What if democratic institutions really have been captured by an elite? Regulatory capture comes to mind as a problem that objectively exists.

The kind of populism that promises easy answers by oversimplifying the issues is a problem.

At the same time, I often feel that there is a deep flaw in modern "moderate/centrist" thinking in not trying hard enough to do the things that would actually be popular, instead coming up with overly technocratic and ultimately flawed arguments for maintaining a status quo that provides bad results for a large fraction of the population.

As a politician, how would you call for getting out of that without being branded as the bad kind of populist?