Thomas Breen photo
Voicing the resistance: Murphy on an April stop at Fair Haven Community Health Care.
Bros approve: Murphy takes down DHS's Kristen Noem.
WASHINGTON — Here’s U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy on this week’s announcement of Qatar offering to send President Donald Trump a new luxury Boeing 747 that could be used as Air Force One: “This is outrageous. We’ve never seen anything like this before in American history — a foreign government gifting a $400 million luxury plane to the president.”
And Murphy at an April rally opposing Trump’s efforts to cut social programs: “Democracy is fragile, it is under assault today, but it is still alive in America, right? The people of this country still have the power.”
And Murphy in March voting against Republican legislation to keep the federal government open through Sept. 30: “Trump has a plan — and he’s implementing it — to destroy our economy and our government, to create a crisis that allows him to hand our government over to his billionaire friends and to suspend our democracy.”
As President Donald Trump speeds past the guardrails that have restrained previous chief executives, the Connecticut Democratic Senator is holding up a giant stop sign.
“I don’t really feel like I’m doing anything terribly exceptional,” he said in an interview with the Independent. “I just feel like it’s a pretty obvious moment where we’re at risk of losing our democracy and if we don’t understand the stakes, we won’t be able to muster the energy and the effort that we need to save our democracy.”
He’s getting noticed.
“You have to be unafraid to stand up and speak out these days,” said Democratic U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro of New Haven. “We can’t sit by and watch things happening. You have to speak up. He will, I will, others will. We are speaking up.”
Murphy is no stranger to the national stage; in June 2016, he held a filibuster on the Senate floor to demand votes on gun regulations. He had support from U.S. Sen. Cory Booker and then returned the favor last month when the New Jersey Democrat waged the longest filibuster in history.
In the second Trump presidency, Murphy has made a decision to be more like Independent Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who have been holding rallies around the country pushing back against the president.
“It’s obvious to me that he believes that the strategy is to double down, not to compromise, not to be intimidated by Trump, but to double down,” said former Democratic U.S. Rep. Toby Moffett, who once held the House seat that Murphy later occupied and whom the senator calls a mentor.
Murphy said he needs to keep speaking out about the threat to democracy that he believes Trump and his allies pose.
“I spent the last couple of years trying to understand the New Right and I saw very plainly how they were preparing an assault on democracy,” he said. “The pseudo-intellectual underpinnings of MAGA don’t believe democracy is worth it any longer and don’t think we should have any government in which there’s a chance that progressives could ever rule. That made me believe that their campaign to undermine democracy was not ham-handed or accidental but very well organized and very purposeful.”
Like Booker, Murphy, 51, is the voice of a younger generation of congressional Democrats. Democratic consultant Glenn Totten said he’s speaking to those who stayed home last November, one of the reasons Donald Trump won the presidency.
“He’s one of the few senators on the Democratic side who is articulating something that is a change in the status quo,” Totten said. “He is talking to a new group of voters, the young people, who are suggesting that the system doesn’t work for them. One of the reasons we have the current president is too many people did not vote. They didn’t think the system was going to make their lives any better.”
Moffett, who joins calls with former Democratic members of Congress several times a month, said data showed that while 75 percent of Democrats considered Trump a danger, the remaining 25 percent did not.
“It accounts for so much of no shows, particularly in blue states and battleground states,” he said.
That’s one group Murphy is trying to reach. And he’s speaking to them through the communications channels they use — social media. For example, he said the number of his Instagram followers has quadrupled.
Said Moffett: “My generation of pols is clueless about social media. It’s also a huge line in the sand where those of us who didn’t serve in the era of social media are totally different creatures. Murphy is really on the offense on it.”
It gives Murphy a reach that some others don’t have.
“Mr. Murphy is stepping out in front of a movement to make major changes in how the country is run and pay attention to the voters who seem to have fallen through the cracks,” Totten said. “At this point in time, the Democratic Party needs to have a voice. They need a champion at this point in time. There’s no doubt in my mind that Sen. Murphy is in the race to be that champion.”
While the next presidential election is still years away, Murphy’s willingness to speak out against Trump has inserted his name into the discussion of who the 2028 Democratic standard-bearer should be.
Murphy is no stranger to residents of New Hampshire, having visited the early presidential primary state several times to campaign for other candidates.
And he’s already known there for his advocacy for gun legislation, hailing from the state that was home to the Sandy Hook shootings, veteran New Hampshire Democratic consultant Jim Demers said.
“He is very well liked,” Demers said. “He doesn’t just advocate for change; he has experienced the need for change. His message is extremely compelling.”
Murphy hasn’t taken the steps to start building a national campaign yet, Moffett said.
“There are a lot of people out there who love the guy,” he said. “But any successful national campaign will have people like that feeling as though they were on board before the ship left the dock, and even that they had a role in charting where the craft was going. I don’t see that box being checked, at least not yet. …I’d love to see him be more aggressive and more connected. We’re getting to the point in the calendar when people are starting to move and organize.”
If he does run, Moffett said, he will have one big advantage.
“He really does get crossover from white guys who might vote for Trump,” Moffett said. “That’s a very big box he can check.”
As for Murphy, he said he wasn’t thinking beyond serving in the Senate.
“This job is pretty damn important right now,” he said. “To the extent that my content has been picked up more by people, it’s due to the fact that I don’t have any personal agenda behind it. The only thing I want is for this country to survive Donald Trump. I think it’s pretty presumptuous for us to be thinking about an election in 2028 when it’s not terribly clear yet that we’re going to actually have a free and fair election in 2028.”