You don’t have to lie, you just have to appeal to emotion with your pitch. Bernie was a great example of a populist candidate who knew how to make people feel passionate about things without lying to them. He got a lot of flack for repeating the same lines, but that is all that some Americans can handle—a slogan. He was smart enough to pick ones where most Americans instantly knew what he was about, and it felt good.
Nobody really knows what “build back better” means, and it sort of implies that we’ve been damaged in some way and need repair. MAGA doesn’t really mean shit either, but it implies that we’ve tended to be pretty great, and all we need is to remember those times and recreate them. It is supercharged with Hollywood’s nostalgic eye towards the past, and it doesn’t even require you to know why Medicare is good to want to get on board with it.
So, from that perspective, democrats need marketing. They need meme reacts, iconic looks, and coolness, and they need to stop trying to stifle the candidates they have who exemplify those qualities.
If they can’t figure that shit out, they’re going to keep losing at moments that they sorely need to win.