'We have become the party of the status quo': Chris Murphy makes his case to lead Democrats forward
The senator from Connecticut has been spending heavily on social media to promote messages standing up to Trump and addressing Democrats’ shortcomings after 2024.
Sen. Chris Murphy has made a name for himself as someone willing to chase bipartisan deals on some of Washington’s thorniest issues.
But weeks into President Donald Trump’s second administration, Murphy, D-Conn., has taken steps to put himself at the center of aggressive resistance to Trump — and to let his party’s rank and file know it. Murphy is spending heavily to advertise on social media platforms and is flooding the zone on television and podcasts, positioning himself as the tip of the spear of Democratic Party efforts to oppose Trump in Washington.
In an interview in his Capitol Hill office last week, Murphy embraced the idea that he’s on a new path after years pursuing a role as a Senate dealmaker and foreign policy expert. He argued his newfound push to oppose Trump is an imperative. And he bucked the idea that he’s essentially already mounting a shadow run for president — even as he acknowledged he’s looking to “build a movement all around this country” to mobilize against the “seizure of government by the billionaires and the destruction of our democracy.” It’s a theme he says his party needs to adopt to appeal once more to voters who decided they couldn’t back Democrats in 2024.
“This may look a little schizophrenic, having gone from spending two years writing big bipartisan deals on guns or on immigration to now being out front in trying to fight for the survival of the democracy and using really tough language about my Republican colleagues,” Murphy said, seated in the same spot where he records a majority of videos for his growing social media audience.
“When somebody is trying to grab power, when somebody is trying to destroy democracy, they benefit from people who are static, who refuse to be nimble,” he continued. “I mean, every Democrat could just continue to run in the same direction they’ve been running for the last 10 years. Or you could realize that this moment is different, that this threat is unique — and to me, you know, we don’t have another year to fight this attempt to destroy democracy. Our democracy might be gone in six months.”
Murphy is taking his new message to a variety of platforms, like the liberal “Pod Save America,” as well as hosts such as Brian Tyler Cohen and Mehdi Hasan; comedy hosts like Hasan Minhaj; legacy media outlets such as The New York Times; and the conservative “Hugh Hewitt Show.”
And he spent more than $1 million on ads on Meta platforms in February alone, delivering his message directly to individuals. It’s more than he has spent on the likes of Facebook and Instagram in the last five years combined, a period that includes his 2024 re-election campaign, according to analysis by the University of Pennsylvania Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies. Murphy’s aides said he has doubled his Instagram following during the last two months and seen a significant increase in engagement across platforms.
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If you believe in Senator Chris Murphy’s fight to lead the Democratic Party forward and push back against the forces threatening democracy, we invite you to support us. By joining or upgrading to our annual plan, you can help amplify his message and build a stronger movement. Take advantage of our International Women’s Day 50% special offer coupon and be a part of this crucial fight. Together, we can make a difference!
His ads have largely taken on the Trump administration’s early moves in Washington — attacking Trump and billionaire Elon Musk by claiming they are “illegally seizing power” and asking donors to help him bankroll a political movement to fight them.
“Chris needs your help right now to stand up and help build the kind of political operation across the country that we need to fight back against this hateful, destructive agenda from Donald Trump and Elon Musk,” an ad reads.
Murphy says in a video: “How can you help stop Donald Trump’s power grab? One of the things you can do is support people like me with a donation to make sure that we don’t have to spend time raising money, we can be fighting back against this illegal, unconstitutional power grab.”
But he’s not focused exclusively on Trump. Murphy also wants to lead the conversation about what has gone wrong for Democrats and how they can win again in the future.
“We have become the party of the status quo, when we’re not. We’re actually the party of change, the party of transferring power from powerful people to people who have no power,” he said. “I think that the traditional sort of political rules still apply. If we have people out on the streets protesting, if we’re overwhelming Republican town halls, if we’re lighting up the phone lines here, political gravity still exists.”
‘A debate happening within the Democratic Party’
Murphy just won re-election in the fall — and outperformed former Vice President Kamala Harris in his state with a 19-point victory, having vastly outspent his Republican challenger. He won’t have to face Connecticut voters again until 2030, so he’s not crunched for time to raise cash. First elected to the Senate in 2012, the year of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, which killed 20 first graders and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, Murphy spent his first two terms in the Senate championing stronger gun laws. He eventually helped craft a historic bipartisan gun safety bill that President Joe Biden signed after the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
More recently, Murphy was at the table with former independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, of Arizona, and Republican Sen. James Lankford, of Oklahoma, negotiating a bipartisan immigration deal that fell apart last year after painstaking, behind-closed-doors negotiations.
Now, Murphy told reporters, the reason it seems like he’s trying to be everywhere is that he is.
“There’s definitely a debate happening inside the Democratic Party: Should you reserve power, sort of hold and wait and then jump out of the bushes when the moment is right? Or should you flood the zone, just like Donald Trump floods the zone? Should you be fighting every single day?” Murphy said.
“I’m of the school that you have to fight every day and that if you don’t, people aren’t going to think that it’s a red alert moment,” he continued.
Pressed about why he’s raising money for a political movement now, years from midterm or presidential election time, Murphy said that he wasn’t “shirking from this moment” and that he would “use those resources to try to help build up a movement and try to buttress mobilization all around the country.”
He pointed to the aggressive efforts rallying against the unsuccessful GOP effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017 to argue that the party’s posture of “resistance” can work. But he added that the “traditional political resistance to the billionaire takeover of government” needs to come in concert with an attempt to “rebuild the party.”
BEFORE YOU WALK AWAY!
This moment is different, and this threat is unique; we need your urgent support.
If you believe in Senator Chris Murphy’s fight to lead the Democratic Party forward and push back against the forces threatening democracy, we invite you to support us. By joining or upgrading to our annual plan, you can help amplify his message and build a stronger movement. Take advantage of our International Women’s Day 50% special offer coupon and be a part of this crucial fight. Together, we can make a difference!
Nah, we need Crockett or AOC to lead the way. Not another flip flopping white man.
I partially disagree. Not with your very good recommendations of Crockett and AOC, but of dismissing Chris Murphy.
We need as many people on board as possible.
Actually, everyone who has a voice or position must be involved and speaking out.
If every representative and government leader would join the conversation and take action, we could have a chance to defeat the criminal power of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Marco Rubio, and the rest of the cowards and morons running our nation and this world into chaos and destruction.
The damage being caused everywhere by ignorance and incompetence by a group of greedy billionaires who only care for themselves and money.
Trump, with the help of some South African drug addict, and another malignant narcissist, are trying to put Russia in charge of our planets affairs. The fact that there are so many people who fear Trump over the good they could do for billions of people is beyond comprehension.
So, as many possible people as we can get on board to fight for the positive change we so desperately need in this war of good and evil, the better.
Everyone who ever took an oath to the Constitution should be doing everything they can to fight the ignorance and corruption that was wrought upon us by an uneducated, uninformed, ignorant public.
Now, we all have to pay a very high price. Much higher and more treacherous than the “price of eggs”. A new shiny object to distract the weak minded public who listen to weak minded, corrupt leaders in government.
That shall not be our goal, nor the future we need rather of global cooperation.
Trump is driving us over a cliff into the abyss, and so very few have the guts to speak out or act.
So, I appreciate that Chris Murphy is adding his name to that list. It is a very short list, and for that we must implore many more to enlist in saving our Democracy and our geopolitical survival.