The populist movement primaried both political parties while running under a common agenda. It was so successful that new rules were imposed by both parties for their respective primaries to preclude this grass roots intrusion from ever hapenning again.
Politics today has been a choice between Pepsi and Coke. Neither being all that much different from one another with the exception that the right has embraced populism for some time now, while the center right party has morphed into a professional class political party.
I've stated more than once, JGW, that the political observation of facism being a rising populist movement that is denied a left alternative is a correct one, to my mind. The article I linked to is another clear example of the right speaking to middle class concerns whereas the center right has not. Not nearly enough and not for a long while.
You may be content with the Democratic parties direction and record if achievement but I'm not. I'm not interested in lame lesser if two evils choices and party loyalty tests. That's not politics and has been proven to be incompetent and ineffectual. I don't believe in giving the Democratic Party a free pass from critique. Any system that gets a free pass rots from the head down. If it can't reform itsrlf and prove its legitimacy to a majority of voters by no other means than 'not being the other party' then we are in trouble.
Oh wait.....