U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy spent the morning of Sunday, November 10 filming a video on his porch, unshaven, sporting a UConn baseball cap and a hoodie. In the four-minute monologue, he claimed that the Democrats’ defeat in the 2024 election was “unacceptable” and called for a “fundamental rebuild” of the left.
At the crux of his argument: “Americans are exhausted by a neoliberal economic order that has consolidated power in the hands of the few, that has forced them to become global citizens instead of having some unique local identity or a true sense of being an American citizen.” Unlike other liberals who seem confused about Donald Trump’s victory, our senator understands exactly where his Democratic Party has gone wrong.
The Democrats must grapple with two key issues in the face of Donald Trump’s charismatic persona and his populist MAGA movement.
First, they have largely lost touch with the working class. Trump, in the 2016, 2020, and 2024 presidential elections, carried counties representing a minority of national GDP. A majority of rank-and-file Teamsters supported Trump over Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
Second, the Democrats’ insistence on political correctness has amounted to the “Democratic HR Complex,” as outlined in Mike Pesca’s recent Atlantic article. Faced with policy catered to the economic elite and stringent language policing, many decent, well-meaning Americans, proud of their identities as such, have opted for Trump and his rule-bashing. This has been the case in Connecticut, where Trump carried more points in 2024 than in the 2020 and 2016 elections, and of course, the rest of the country, where in the 2024 election, he won both the popular and electoral vote.
Murphy fundamentally understands these issues. He believes that the Democrats cannot win without building a “bigger tent,” and he understands that in order to do so, they will need to “have economic populism as that tent pole, and then allow into the tent people that do not agree with us on 100% of our core social, cultural issues.”
The Democrats were once seen as the party of free speech; not any more. They need not abandon their commitment to social, racial, and sexual equality, but pushing the many Americans who disagree with the party’s “social justice” orthodoxy toward Trump, who has been called a “fascist” by many, including Kamala Harris, is not a winning strategy – for the Democrats and America alike. As Murphy says, rather than subscribing to a specific orthodoxy, the Democrats can work on the social and ideological issues, and differences in opinion, inside “the tent” of broad Democratic support.
It also appears to me that Murphy is not merely capitalizing on the political moment; none of his ideas are necessarily new. Murphy has long been calling the Democrats to action. He’s argued for a “political center based on class, not identity.” He has condemned his fellow Democrats for shunning Oliver Anthony and his song “Rich Men North of Richmond,” which criticizes the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of elites. In 2022, he took to the pages of the Atlantic to voice his opinion that neoliberalism is failing. He argued that if the Democrats continued to pursue this governing ideology that prioritizes consumerism and the interests of the wealthy, they would simply lose power. The nationwide results of the 2024 election serve as the single best testament to that.
Liberals would be very wrong to equate Murphy’s support of left populism with sympathy toward MAGA. By reclaiming the Democrats’ working-class and free speech roots, Murphy isn’t cozying up to Trump and his movement. He is actively fighting it. I would know. My father, who is not necessarily conservative but also definitely not a progressive at heart, cast his vote for Trump for president and Murphy for senator. If Murphy can appeal to him, why shouldn’t other Democrats be able to?
The Democratic establishment should take note of the people all across the country like my father, and that Murphy is certainly not the only liberal voicing his concerns. Cenk Uygur, the host of The Young Turks, recently spoke at AmeriFest, rejoicing in the shared power of populism on the left and right in the face of the “establishment.”
Joe Rogan, who supported Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential election, warmly welcomed Mr. Trump to his popular podcast and endorsed him the night before the 2024 election. Uygur and Rogan are clearly not conservatives. They are, however, disaffected men who take an interest in working-class priorities and free speech, and in the face of a lack of systemic solutions and effective messaging from the Democrats, have somewhat opted for MAGA. As Sanders – certainly more of a radical than Murphy – put it, “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.” However, unlike Uygur, Rogan, and Sanders, what makes our senator so unique is that he is within the Democratic Party, offering effective, relatively centrist, and common-sense solutions that could readily be adopted by his peers.
It is also worth mentioning that while Murphy is from Connecticut, seen as a rich state by most people I talk to at Columbia University and elsewhere in the country, he is not from the Connecticut of Greenwich, Westport, and the top 1% living there. He is from Wethersfield and has lived inland most of his life. He is, in other words, from the Connecticut I call home, which bears little semblance to the Gold Coast towns built off New York’s concentrated wealth and power.
Our Connecticut is anchored around Hartford, a city and metropolitan area that has been suffering for years from corporations leaving for other states and poor governmental policy crafted by the state’s leading party, the Democrats. Neoliberalism has not helped us. Neither has lofty “social justice” idealism in a state where white people earn significantly more than their Black and Hispanic counterparts, at one of the highest rates in the nation.
Democrats should listen to Murphy, and start actually pushing toward what leftists should: universal single-payer healthcare and systematic reform, working-class concerns that are, among others, issues that have largely been ignored. I believe that Murphy’s lived experience in Connecticut, similar to my own, informs his opinion, and makes it all the more valid.
Socioeconomic class aside, there is also no reason that Trump should capture the vote of what should be a liberal demographic: young men. I graduated high school early. Even though I am a college student, I am still 17. I cannot be involved in participatory politics, which gives me some critical distance on this subject. The unfortunate truth is that I would probably stay home either way, like so many other left-leaning men my age, many of whom listen to social commentator Democratic exiles like Rogan and Uygur. However, I still reject the “disaffected” label. Our senator instills hope in me that the project of true American liberalism is not lost.
If the Democrats want to win against MAGA – a movement that will likely continue even after Trump’s second term – they need to finally abandon the neoliberalism of the 80s and 90s, as well as their rigid focus on “social justice” but not economic justice, and accept the reality of the situation in 2025. They might start by listening to people within their own party, like Murphy, and once again prioritize the interests of their historic base – the working class.
The cataclysm of Trump’s victory and an electoral wipeout may just force them to. It provides an optimistic opportunity for the Democrats to rework their party identity and win back broad popular support outside of places like the Connecticut Gold Coast, especially in key states in the Rust Belt that more often than not determine the results of most presidential elections. Otherwise, the Democrats only give room to MAGA to trivialize the legitimate interests of Americans, their oft-differing opinions, and their hopes of achieving the American Dream.
Nikos Mohammadi of Glastonbury is a student at Columbia University, Staff Writer at the Columbia Political Review and Communications Director of the National Youth Rights Association.