Good analysis, and much better than I expected, but in this paragraph I think you're way off base:
She adopted the $15 minimum wage
Minimum wage increases are incredibly popular as the results for ballot measures even in red states and national polling both prove pretty conclusively.
Again, this is a popular position. While I don't think going to Sanders's plan of completely tuition-free public universities is a good idea politically or policy-wise, I'm confident most Americans would love for college to be more affordable. I mean, my deep red home state of Tennessee is already providing almost all high school graduates with tuition-free community college and providing government aid for people going back to school for job retraining and it's extremely popular. And by the way, Clinton only supported tuition-free college for those whose families make less than $125,000 a year.
You are extremely out of touch if you believe any of that. Almost all Americans believe the economy is rigged in favor of the rich (and truth be told, it's impossible for any system that has rich people not to be "rigged" to some extent), and the majority of people are angry at the rich, and a large minority even hate them as a group. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of people with annual incomes under $100,000 who don't want taxes on the rich increased. And scientific polling has consistently shown that Americans support increasing the minimum wage and raising taxes on the rich by two-to-one margins. And Hillary supported raising the minimum wage to $12/hour, not $15, and her proposed tax increases on the rich were not all that large, unless I'm badly misremembering.
But you did get it right there. The reason those policies didn't resonate coming from Hillary was not because they're unpopular (on the contrary, they're wildly popular), but because people didn't believe they were sincere. If Democrats are to win next time, they absolutely
must maintain those positions, and nominate someone charismatic who can articulate them credibly. Democrats will never, ever win by backing off of economic populism.
