Murphy on Democrats' losses: 'Our tent is too small'

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) offered his thoughts on Democrats’ losses in this year’s elections in a Sunday thread on the social platform X.

“We are out of touch with the crisis of meaning/purpose fueling MAGA,” Murphy said in the thread. “We refuse to pick big fights. Our tent is too small.”

The Connecticut Senator noted multiple issues he thinks the American left is struggling with when it comes to reaching voters, including having “never fully grappled with the wreckage of fifty years of neoliberalism” and moving “past the way people are feeling (alone, impotent, overwhelmed) and straight to uninspiring solutions.”

“We don't listen enough; we tell people what's good for them,” Murphy said.

“And when progressives like [Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)] aggressively go after the elites that hold people down, they are shunned as dangerous populists. Why? Maybe because true economic populism is bad for our high-income base,” he added.

In the wake of the 2024 elections, Democrats from different parts of the party have gone after each other for what they think sunk their chances at the polls, as they lost the Senate, the presidency and possibly the House. Those further to the left have said Democrats didn’t go far enough in their direction to excite the party’s base, while centrists have said the party went too far left and frightened moderate voters.

“Real economic populism should be our tentpole,” Murphy said on X. “But here's the thing - then you need to let people into the tent who aren't 100% on board with us on every social and cultural issue, or issues like guns or climate.”

Sanders argued Wednesday that Democrats have mostly ignored working-class priorities, saying that ignorance was a major factor in costing them the White House and Senate in the recent elections.

“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” Sanders said in a statement on this year’s election results.