Democrat Sen. Chris Murphy gave a scathing analysis of his own party’s standing with voters, explaining why it is a “pretty broken brand right now.”
Appearing on The New Yorker’s podcast Friday, the Connecticut lawmaker addressed the prevalence of public opinion polls that indicate voters are deeply dissatisfied with the Democrats’ platform.
“I think we are a pretty broken brand right now,” Murphy told the magazine’s editor, David Remnick. “And I think some of the people on the left don’t want to go through that hard rewrite of what the Democratic Party stands for.”
Murphy offered a succinct but devastating account of what’s at the heart of his party’s “brokenness.”
He said that the Dems have become the “status quo party,” adding: “We have reverted to defending democracy instead of explaining how we are going to break it down and reform it.”
Murphy, who has represented his state in Congress since 2007, said that his party has not been “pugilistically populist ... where we name the people who have power and we build very easy-to-understand solutions about how to transfer power.”
Murphy also pointed to what has been a popular explanation for President Donald Trump and the Republicans’ success during the 2024 election cycle: “We’re a pretty judgmental party, filled with a dozen litmus tests.” He said that the Dems “don’t let you in unless you agree with us on kind of everything.”
Murphy said the party could do a better job at fostering a “little more acceptance of people who have diverging views on cultural and social issues.”
He painted the consequences of Democrats’ sinking brand in dire terms. Amid Trump’s attack on the judiciary and his political foes, Murphy said that he was worried that there wouldn’t be a “free and fair election” in 2026.
“What I’m talking about is that the infrastructure necessary for an opposition to win will have been destroyed,” he explained. “No lawyers will represent us. They will take down ActBlue ... They will have threatened activists with violence, so nobody will show up to our rallies.”
This is why Murphy believes that “everything we should be doing right now... should be geared toward trying to make Republicans stop this assault on the rule of law and Democratic norms.”
