DOWN AND OUT

After the 2024 fiasco, the Democrats are rethinking everything

- BY CHARLOTTE ALTER

LIKE A LOT OF DEMOCRATS THESE days, Chris Murphy has been doing some soul searching. For years, the Connecticut Senator, who took office shortly after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, was one of the nation's most outspoken advocates for tighter gun laws. Gun safety was so important, he argued, that supporting an assault-weapons ban should be mandatory for Democratic leaders.

Recently, Murphy has come to believe he was wrong. Not about tougher gun laws, but about trying to force all Democrats to adopt his position. “I bear some responsibility for where we are today,” he told me in a phone interview in April. “I spent a long time trying to make the issue of guns a litmus test for the Democratic Party. I think that all of the interest groups that ended up trying to apply a litmus test for their issue ended up making our coalition a lot smaller.”

Gallego, at the Capitol on Jan. 9, is urging fellow Democrats to be less cautious and more authentic

Murphy's shift in thinking is part of the reckoning that has gripped the party since President Donald Trump's victory in November. Democrats could dismiss Trump's first win as a fluke. His second, they know, was the product of catastrophic failure—a nationwide rejection of Democratic policies, Democratic messaging, and the Democrats themselves. The party got skunked in every battleground state and lost the popular vote for the first time in 20 years. They lost the House and the Senate. Their support sagged with almost every demographic cohort except Black women and college-educated voters. Only 35% of Democrats are optimistic about the future of of the party, according to a May 14 AP poll, down from nearly 6 in 10 last July. Democrats have no mojo, no power, and no unifying leader to look to for a fresh start.