‘Time to Rebuild the Left’: Senate Democrat Admits His Party is ‘Out of Touch’ in Scorching Social Media Thread

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) criticized his party as “out of touch” with voters on key issues in a lengthy statement he posted on social media on Sunday in which he concluded it is “time to rebuild the left.”

Reflecting on the aftermath of the 2024 election, in which former President Donald Trump won a second term, Democrats lost the Senate, and Republicans appeared primed to retain the House, Murphy outlined a strategy for his party’s recovery.

The senator stressed the need for a dramatic shift in how Democrats approach issues in which he said they had lost the plot. Murphy also called the 2024 election a “cataclysm.”

He argued that the Democratic Party must confront its growing disconnect with voters and explained how he felt the party could do so.

“The left has never fully grappled with the wreckage of fifty years of neoliberalism,” he said on his X, formerly Twitter, page. “The left skips past the way people are feeling (alone, impotent, overwhelmed) and straight to uninspiring solutions (more roads! bulk drug purchasing!) that do little to actually upset the status quo of who has power and who doesn’t.”

The Connecticut Democrat also called out the party for not listening to the grievances expressed by voters, particularly those in rural areas and men feeling demoralized by the challenging of traditonal gender mores.

“We cannot be afraid of fights – especially with the economic elites who have profited off neoliberalism,” he said.

Murphy also pointed to the right’s aggressive criticism of elites in media and academia, which he said ran concurrently with Democrats being “tepid” in those fights.

“Real economic populism should be our tentpole,” he said. “We are out of touch with the crisis of meaning/purpose fueling MAGA. We refuse to pick big fights. Our tent is too small.” Murphy added:

We don’t listen enough; we tell people what’s good for them. And when progressives like Bernie 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. Meanwhile, men tumble into a different kind of identity crisis, as the patriarchy, society’s primary organizing paradigm for centuries, rightly crashes.

The right pushes an alluring dial back. The left says “get over it”. Again, a refusal to listen/offer responsible solutions. We cannot be afraid of fights – especially with the economic elites who have profited off neoliberalism. The right regularly picks fights with elites – Hollywood, higher ed, etc. Democrats (e.g. the Harris campaign) are tepid in our fights with billionaires and corporations.

Real economic populism should be our tentpole. 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. Those are hard things for the left. A firm break with neoliberalism. Listen to poor and rural people, men in crisis. Don’t decide for them. Pick fights. Embrace populism. Build a big tent. Be less judgmental.

The senator concluded the left was “beyond small fixes.”