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Sen. Chris Murphy joined Anand Giridharadas on his October 29 podcast to talk about "fighting the authoritarian takeover, remaking the Democratic Party, and how you, today, can cure the disease that led to Trumpism."
According to Giridharadas, Murphy is one of the clearest, loudest and most unafraid voices against Trump.
Giridharadas wanted to get some insight from Murphy on what reflecting has been done by Democrats in the nearly one year since Trump won.
"I think many people were not ready for how dizzying the campaign of destruction was going to be," said Murphy. "Trump and his crowd, they were ready this time, and from day one they began to unwind our democracy."
Murphy couldn't explain why no one on the democrat side has otherwise taken stock of what went wrong for them. He complained that corporate America just joined Trump, and blamed the media for not doing any "stock-taking."
"But inside the democratic party... there are some interesting sort of strains of thought, but I would say that almost all of the energy has been spent on trying to figure out how to engage in conventional resistance and we are still stuck as a party that is probably still unelectable in broad swaths of the country, as you know," said Murphy who has his own take on how to address the Democrat Party's "electability problem."
"My view, which is I think kind of the view of people like Bernie and Elizabeth and Mamdani, has not taken root as the conventional mainstream view," said Murphy. "I think most people just want to run back the same version of the democratic party that has gotten our clock cleaned in election after election."
Giridharadas pointed out that Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Zohran Mamdani scare certain kinds of people -- like those who fear socialism -- and asked Murphy to explain why they shouldn't be afraid of those "ideas".
"I think though Trump's movement is rooted in this false, perverse, misogynist, racist nostalgia, everybody in this country has some version of nostalgia for a part of the nation that they liked long ago," said Murphy. "And I think that was a nation that was more communitarian, a nation in which we felt a little bit more of a tug towards our neighbors."
He said the ideas that folks like he and Bernie are suggesting aren't "that fundamentally radical" but they are trying to "return us to a world in which we had a little bit higher level of commitment to each other."
"Don't be afraid of it because the world we are looking to build is one that is not going to be super unfamiliar to you," Murphy promised.
Then Giridharadas asked Murphy what he has learned about how America works over the last year as they're "watching this giant organism deal with this kind of virus of an authoritarian attempt."
Murphy said Trump is just a symptom of an underlying disease -- "a country that is having trouble finding connection to purpose and to meaning" -- and just beating Trump won't be enough to fix that.
The conversation touched on the Democrat-led government shutdown.
"We're saying on one hand 1933 in Berlin over here, and then instead of the message being don't fund 1933 in Berlin, we're focusing on this other thing that is obviously very important, but quite different," said Giridharadas. "How do you think about that?"
Murphy cited "two co-equal reasons" for Dems to continue their shutdown and not sign onto the Republicans' budget.
First, he said that the Republican budget "could collapse" the health care system, citing "devastating" Medicaid and ACA cuts -- like by preventing illegals from accessing these benefits -- then he said Democrats can't reopen the government until they stop the ACA rate increase from going into effect.
Second, he said that Democrats have a "moral obligation to not vote for a budget that funds the destruction of our democracy."
"Like what a sucker I would be to give my vote for a budget that funds the Department of Justice that might actually lock me up and put me in prison," said an exacerbated Murphy. "What a trick that would be if Donald Trump convinced me to do that."
Murphy was concerned that prior to the shutdown, people didn't think the Democrat party was even a "legitimate opposition party" so he felt Democrats had to "show power" and "relevance" to make sure their followers didn't turn to violence -- but that they stood "in the way of dissent towards totalitarianism."
He was also frustrated that Democrats "lost" after running a campaign about "saving democracy" in 2024, and then rationalized the loss by saying people probably just didn't want to save that version of democracy. "People really are only going to be on board for saving democracy if it's a different version than the one we have."
What version would that be, Murph? Full-blown socialism? Maybe even communism?
Murphy doesn't want his party to put its "thumbs on the scales against candidates who have really big ideas for how you deconstruct concentrated power in this country"... a comment he made in reference to Graham Platner, the democrat candidate in Maine who identifies as a communist and has a Nazi tattoo.
Giridharadas asked if it was possible to have more candidates like that -- in a scaled and systematic way -- without having to first change leadership in the Democrat party.
Murphy assumed the question was about Chuck Schumer whom Murphy says has "got a fucking hard job because this caucus is pretty diverse." Plus, Murphy said there aren't enough Democrats willing to take risks and "live outside the sort of conventional boundaries of politics at a moment of real peril like this."
Then Murphy said he wants to make sure that Democrats "do not sign onto a budget that funds a corrupt Department of Justice, a corrupt Department of Homeland Security, a corrupt FCC."
He further suggested we are in the "middle of the authoritarian takeover" and anyone not willing to stand up to the authoritarians should just step aside right now.
On the bright side, Murphy was heartened after speaking at No Kings in DC.
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Murphy is an IDIOT!
This stooge hasn't a clue how to do the mental jujitsu it takes to explain his party, its policies, his positions, and square it with the reality in which we all dwell. So, he resorts to blazing gaslighting on every single issue. He thereby places himself in a clear alternate reality - and everyone should be able to see that at this point......
Murphy iS the disease. Biden and Democrats used a variety of illegal and unconstitutional means to destroy democracy, including an assault on the 1st Amendment by pressuring social media companies to censor conservative voices, opposing measures to ensure voter identity, and most all, to import over 15 million potential new voters and buy their allegiance with billions of taxpayer dollars to change the political demographics of the country. Democrats are the threat to democracy.