As Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer summed it up in The New York Times: “First, we’re going to increase people’s pay. Second, we’re going to reduce their everyday expenses. And third, we’re going to provide workers with the tools they need for the 21st-century economy.”

This third prong in particular sounds eminently sensible, targeted, and forward-looking. It also seems about as likely to excite the masses as a plate of week-old avocado toast.

For understandable reasons, Democrats are eager to jump on the populist bandwagon. But “populism” is a slippery, squishy sort of term that can mean any number of things. “Republicans like Jack Kemp were called ‘populist’ if they appeared to care about someone other than the rich,” notes my former colleague John Judis, author of The Populist Explosion. “Putin is sometimes called a populist because he rides bare-chested on a horse. So the Democrats are free to use the term—meaning in their case that they are focusing now on the economic welfare of less well-to-do Americans rather than Goldman Sachs, transgender people, or illegal immigrants.”

Thomas Mann, a senior fellow in governance studies with the Brookings Institution and co-author of an upcoming book probing Trumpism, agrees: “Populism is a protean concept—used by politicians of all stripes to rally the forgotten people against the nefarious elites. Left wing/right wing, liberal-democratic/authoritarian, policy oriented/purely symbolic, racially inclusive/racist,” he told me. “Trump's populism is in each case of the latter type. Identify the enemy, romanticize the past, promise a return to a better and fairer life.”

With a Better Deal, Democrats are pitching a gentle, constructive, we-want-to-help-you-cope-with-modern-life brand of populism. Trump, by contrast, excels at the let-me-bring-back-the-good-times-by-punishing-the-bad-guys version. Trump’s populism is nativist, revanchist, and ultimately unachievable. (Please tell me no one still believes he’s going to revive the coal industry.) But in terms of raw, gut-level appeal, it kicks the snot out of what the Democrats are peddling.

Just look at Trump’s campaign-ish pep rally in Ohio last Tuesday. In between rants about immigrant invaders and Islamist terrorists, the president repeated his vow to restore the Mahoning Valley to its glory days when steel was king. All those big, beautiful manufacturing jobs are coming back, he swore. He even offered the crowd a bit of real estate advice: “Don’t sell your house. We’re going to get those values up.”

Well, heck, if Trump is going to do all that, why on earth would anyone be jazzed about retraining programs or additional schooling or apprenticeships? All that stuff requires scary change—and worse still, comes with the implicit judgment that one’s current way of life/thinking is somehow inferior. (Let us show you how to become “better”!) And, in the end, who knows if all that change will bring about better anything?