Murphy looks to be guiding force for Democrats in new Trump era

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) is taking a front-and-center role in the efforts to push Democrats toward becoming the party of economic populism and to challenge President Trump.

The Connecticut senator has emerged as one of the loudest and most prominent voices among party members looking to convince Democrats to change their focus around America’s working-class coalition, arguing they’ve lost trust with the voters they desperately need on their side.

Without an obvious leader to counter Trump's early return to power, Murphy is one of the figures seeking to fill that void as the party tries to rebuild from the ground up.

“He’s really interesting right now,” said Matt Duss, a former senior policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has worked with Murphy to co-sponsor legislation in the Senate. “He’s articulating a really powerful theory of the case about rebuilding an American political consensus. And he’s doing so in a unifying and constructive way.”

In the frantic first few months following Democrats’ electoral defeat, Murphy has seemed to do the impossible — gain an equal amount of praise from the two polarizing sides of his party. The lack of enemies has garnered attention as lawmakers, party leaders and campaign operatives start to work past their most glaring problems toward renewed relevance.

“For him to be joining this, I think is notable,” Duss said about Murphy’s anti-corruption message directed at his own party. The senator is “seen as part of the Democratic mainstream, not known as this radical,” he continued. “It’s a sign that the Democratic Party more broadly has lost its way.”

The 51-year-old senator has generally taken a supportive role in the upper chamber without angering his colleagues. He’s an easy vote for most of his party’s legislative agenda and isn’t perceived as a rabble-rouser on either side. He’s progressive but isn’t considered too far left. He has effectively kept a steady profile during times when the party has descended into finger-pointing.

Now, he seems pleased to step into a more adversarial role that some say may put him at odds with more corporate-friendly Democrats. The more he pushes corporate reform and an anti-billionaire message, the more he could collide with Democrats who don’t see their reliance on donor money as the root cause of their troubles.

So far, the crux of his critique, which he launched on social media following Trump's reelection and has since spread in interviews and policy memos, is that the economic menu Democrats are offering voters is stale. Voters have shifted away and see the party as incapable of meeting their material needs. Democrats, he argues, have become more isolated and detached from their base.

Murphy wrote in a postelection letter that a “populist message of power de-concentration is a truly unifying message, across income brackets and political ideologies,” asserting a plausible path ahead. Observers note he is trying to make the case earlier than others that Democrats need to stand in clear opposition to the ultrawealthy people and priorities favored in Trump’s Washington.

Both wings of the party seem to have accepted Murphy’s prognosis. So far he hasn’t appeared to alienate the ever-skeptical left, who often accuse "establishment" Democrats of moving toward their side for political gain. In 2020, for example, a variety of senators became more progressive on various hot-button policies to try to win the presidential nomination against leaders like Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

Murphy has been welcomed among Sanders allies who want to see the movement they helped build coalesce around a new leader. His ability to fly under the radar until more recently, some Democrats say, could be a hidden asset.

“He doesn’t come top of mind, but that’s not a bad thing,” said a senior Democratic strategist who talks regularly with the activists and grassroots coalitions Murphy would need to court to gain more influence.

“He can win them over, especially if he has Bernie’s blessings,” the strategist said. “What people on the left and right respect about Bernie is he [is] principled. So if Bernie embraces him, that’s it, he has that electorate locked up.”

A spokesperson for Murphy did not return requests for comment.

The search for Democratic leadership is just starting to take shape as the party debates why they got wiped out so badly in the 2024 election cycle. Some are getting noticed for taking a cozier approach to the GOP president, such as Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who met with him at Mar-a-Lago, while others are publicly chastising how his leadership model resembles an "oligarchy."

Murphy is not shy about going after Trump when he sees fit. On Sunday, he warned that “democracies don’t last forever” in an appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” calling the current state of politics “the most serious constitutional crisis the country has faced.”

“The president is attempting to seize control of power and for corrupt purposes. The president wants to be able to decide how and where money is spent so that he can reward his political friends, he can punish his political enemies. That is the evisceration of democracy,” he said.

Democrats say balancing talk about the real-time threats he sees to fragile democratic structures with the economic plight for millions of people is one path to breaking through in the Trump era.

“Let’s make sure we choose the right enemies,” Duss said. “The enemies are corporate elites that have captured our political system. The elites have gamed the system for their own benefit. There’s a reason why Trump gets traction when he says the system is rigged. It’s because the system is rigged.”

“But it’s rigged on behalf of people like Trump and his flunkies. I think part of the message we’re hearing from Sen. Murphy and we’ve heard for a long time from Sen. Sanders is Democrats need to be less timid about saying that,” he added.

Democrats who are more evenhanded in their approach than the activated progressive left agree that he’s cutting through much of the discussion about next steps. Mixing an economic populist message while articulating the corruption concerns around Trump could start to catch on.

“Murphy is tapping into the outrage and urgency that millions of people across the country are feeling better than almost anyone else in the Senate at the moment,” said Doug Gordon, a Democratic strategist. “He is smartly abandoning the cautious, poll-tested, talking point-based way too many Democrats have communicated the last several years.”

“People want to see action and fight, and Murphy is tapping into that,” Gordon said.

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