I very much agree that it would be much better to go after corporate concentration and actually enforce existing antitrust laws. My experience with Democrat friends and family has been that they do actually see anti price gouging laws as a way to fix things, and I think part of that is there are a lot of people who have seen the decades of "government will only make things worse" rhetoric lead to monopoly control of industries and higher prices for many goods. I think there are a lot of people who just want the government to be on the side of regular people rather than the wealthy and your populist analysis points to that.
I very much agree that it would be much better to go after corporate concentration and actually enforce existing antitrust laws. My experience with Democrat friends and family has been that they do actually see anti price gouging laws as a way to fix things, and I think part of that is there are a lot of people who have seen the decades of "government will only make things worse" rhetoric lead to monopoly control of industries and higher prices for many goods. I think there are a lot of people who just want the government to be on the side of regular people rather than the wealthy and your populist analysis points to that.