Democracy is not sacred. It is just a way to organise society. It has some advantages and it is likely the best way we know, but that does not mean we should be silent about its disadvantages, and populism is just a fail mode of democracy, or a strategy to exploit its weaknesses.

Populism is not 'doing what people want', it is a strategy of orienting a societal/political conflict on people vs. elites axis. But elites are usually right, that is why they are elites in their social hierarchies. For democracies to work properly, people have to trust elites (and elites have to be trustworthy).