Caesar is hard to compare with people today. He was an elite but was also different from them. Like he was incredibly popular with the military because, in addition to being a respected commander who led his legions to success, he also took the controversial position of “hey maybe we should honour the promises we made to those who signed up to fight for our former republic rather than use beaurocracy and the Senate to weasel out of it and fuck them over”, which was very unpopular with the wealthy landowners that either wanted the land themselves or just didn’t want more competition.

The assassins complained about the dictatorship becoming permanent but I think it was the land thing that really drove them because Augustus continued on to become the actual first emperor of Rome (and also ended up pushing through Caesar’s land distribution reforms once he secured his power anyways, though that could have just been pragmatic for both of them, since an unhappy military is how Caesar was able to do his coup in the first place).