The Democratic Party, in the person of Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, has launched a new slogan for its 2018 midterm cycle: “A Better Deal.”

The notion is to relate their current list of uninspiring policy proposals to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s and the Great Depression.

As the New York Times summarized Schumer’s launch, there’s some recognition of the party’s need to speak to working people’s concerns: a $15-an-hour minimum wage, an attempt to lower the cost of prescription drugs. But given that we have 20 million uninsured and may soon have 40 million, lowering drug costs doesn’t really speak to the seriousness of the problem. And Schumer’s emphasis on job-training programs, that old meritocratic, business-friendly policy of Democrats long favored by centrists like Bill Clinton — but with a long history of failing to actually ameliorate inequality or empower workers — hardly speak to the needs of millions of unemployed, underemployed, low-paid, and contingent workers.