The inability of "populism" to advance a coherent normative conception of the public good seems to dismay @DouthatNYT here, but the essence of populism is a refusal to do so. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/opinion/trump-hawley-populism.html

Which is to say that populism is a set of tactics rather than a philosophy. If someone claims there's an easy way to substantially improve the welfare of workers and families, which economists have simply been neglecting, there's probably a reason for that
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/opinion/trump-hawley-populism.html

As a form of pragmatism, populism can be helpful in shaking the GOP free from some dogmas. But bills like TCJA owed a lot more to 50 years of scholarship of the effect of tax policy design on welfare (including "workers and families") than it did to Robert Nozick and Ayn Rand.

It's revealing that the main policy advanced as an alternative to tax cuts is... to simply leave individuals with $2,000 more in their pocket. The recommended populism seems to amount to little more than ignoring complex dynamic effects: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/opinion/trump-hawley-populism.html