Story highlights Progressives are greeting leadership's economic agenda with cautious optimism

Democrats hope they can juice the base while activating a growing populist grassroots

(CNN) The plan is out and the verdict is in. Progressives are greeting the Democratic congressional leadership's new economic agenda with cautious optimism, choosing to highlight notes of common cause -- and mostly play down the now familiar divisions -- as the party begins a fresh play to rebrand itself ahead of the coming midterm election.

There is little in the policy portfolio introduced on Monday in Virginia that will strike voters as new or innovative -- a close reading of the Hillary Clinton campaign's voluminous issues hub will turn up many of the same ideas and policy prescriptions. If anything, Clinton ultimately went further then than the new pitch did in its debut now, with pages dedicated to organized labor and debt-free college.

But the question for national Democrats in this chaotic moment is less about policy -- an ongoing debate that both invigorates and threatens to rupture the party -- than prioritization in messaging. A dirty word in some quarters, Democrats are now banking on the hope that, by zeroing in on chronic economic dislocation, they can juice the liberal base while activating a growing populist grassroots that rejected Trumpism but never quite came around to the alternative.

The challenge now, will be in convincing the public to buy in.

"You have to be extremely disciplined," Rebecca Katz, a progressive Democratic strategist and former top aide to former Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, told CNN. "It's not about the one day of unveiling a message. It's about sticking to it every single day and having all of your members and all of your candidates saying the same thing, over and over and over again."

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