WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.

Well not too new and not too blue. That is the “Better Deal” announced with some fanfare on Monday by congressional Democrats that seems more about better communications than better policies.

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer of New York is leading the charge after he dissed the losing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton over the weekend.

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“When you lose to somebody who has 40% popularity, you don’t blame other things — Comey, Russia — you blame yourself,” Schumer told the Washington Post.

Given the one-note campaign conducted by Clinton, it’s no wonder voters got the idea that all Democrats stood for was beating Republican nominee Donald Trump — as Schumer correctly observed.

Typically for the Democrats, however, everything from the message to the messenger to the timing was off. Schumer’s enunciation of three fairly anodyne principles, and three specific but limited policies — with promises of more to come — fell with a dull thud on a day dominated by news of Jared Kushner’s testimony in the Senate on his Russian contacts.

In the written testimony Trump’s son-in-law released to the public ahead of his closed-door testimony, Kushner described his fleeting contacts with Russians before and after the election, which he described as routine, harmless and nothing approaching collusion.

It turns out, though, that Kushner and Schumer agree on one thing — Clinton lost because she ran a worse campaign, not because anyone interfered in the election.

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“Donald Trump had a better message and ran a smarter campaign, and that is why he won,” Kushner said in brief remarks after his testimony. “Suggesting otherwise ridicules those who voted for him.”

As for Schumer, his wistful nostalgia for an America where you could own a home, afford a car, put your kids through college, take a vacation if you worked hard — “I grew up in that America,” he said — contains more than an echo of Trump’s much simpler slogan, “Make America Great Again.”

The three specific proposals rolled out this week are offering a tax credit to small businesses to train the workers they need, creating 10 million jobs; giving Medicare the authority to negotiate drug prices,and taking other measures to prevent rampant price-gouging in the industry; and reinforcing the “anti” in antitrust enforcement.

As the Baltimore Sun editorialists commented, “Are you excited yet?”

The three principles of this new New Deal — increasing people’s pay, reducing their expenses, and giving them the tools for the 21st century economy — are even less stirring.

Rather than a bold departure, this “Better Deal” resembles the same minimalist, incremental approach that marked Clinton’s endless and tiresome white papers.

Even so, the Democrats’ problem is less the message than the messenger. The 66-year-old Schumer, who has spent many of his 36 years in Congress tirelessly working for this Wall Street constituents and donors, is hardly convincing as a firebrand progressive.

Nor does his advocacy for the “simple folk” come across as authentic in a politician better known for his hobnobbing with royalty in the stratospheric social circles he frequents in New York’s version of Camelot.

The New York Post reported Schumer’s cavorting in the Hamptons earlier this month with Kushner, Ivanka Trump, David Koch and Steven Spielberg at a party hosted by Washington Post heiress Lally Weymouth. The paper all but invited readers to pin the “hypocrite” label on him.

This latest limp effort at messaging only proves that Democrats have learned nothing from last year’s loss. Bernie Sanders was both bold and authentic in his campaign, calling for free college education, single payer health-care, breaking up the banks, and a $15 minimum wage.

Schumer has hinted that, in the Better Deal, Medicare for All will be “on the table.” So why wait, why persist with this drip, drip, drip of policy prescriptions? Could it be they need a few more focus groups on these other policies?

Trump didn’t do focus groups. Plutocrat or not, he knew what people wanted because he listened to what people said. He did his polling at rallies where thousands cheered his policies.

Neither Schumer nor House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, 77, will fire up the millennials Democrats need to win elections — or for that matter, the blue-collar boomers and every other generation in between.

None of the fresh faces touted as presidential hopefuls have demonstrated either the substance or the charisma to rally Democrats.

Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, long touted as a potential presidential candidate, has missed several opportunities to stand out from the pack. Freshman Sen. Kamala Harris of California, who has been aggressively raising her profile, may find her long liaison with California kingpin Willie Brown does not play well in Peoria during a presidential campaign.

Joe Biden, virtually the only Democrat left standing with national name recognition, will be 77 on Election Day. The rest — Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, among others — have no national platform and it’s already late in the day for a 2020 run.

Sanders may want to run again, but he is old, too, and neither he nor Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has faded from view after jumping on Clinton’s bandwagon, will get much of a boost from the milquetoast Better Deal.

Democrats will have to do better than this if they want a hit with American voters.