Bernie is the closer analog to Trump in the Democratic Party, at least for this comparison. Trump is not a checkbox filling candidate by any measure. He was the protest vote against the system.

Certainly the first time he ran. Still "no business running for president" though.

Even the second time, for different reasons. There was a lot of anger at how the Democratic Party kept the details of Biden’s decline hidden, and then did an emergency switcharoo at the last minute without a second primary. A lot of dem voters felt disenfranchised, and didn’t bother voting, or filed a protest vote thinking Trump would be as ineffectual the second time around as he was the first.

You might consider the field even for other reasons (which would make your comment something of a non-sequitur), but those adjectives certainly do not apply to Trump, regardless of what you think of the man and his politics. Trump very famously did not tick GOP checkboxes, and he has inspired a cultish following in a way that Clinton/Biden/Harris clearly cannot.

I kinda hate that we're apparently selecting for "best cult leader" now.

Surely this wasn't what the Greeks intended when they invented democracy.

No one intended it, but this failure mode is covered quite extensively in Plato’s Republic.