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Chris Murphy Goes Off On Democrats At New Hampshire Town Hall

MANCHESTER, N.H. ― Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) had plenty of criticism for his party following the shutdown cave that sparked a backlash against Democratic leadership in the Senate, threatening to spoil their momentum going into next year’s midterm elections.

Appearing at a town hall in the early presidential primary state of New Hampshire on Wednesday, the progressive senator said his fellow Democrats need to change their tactics, messaging and general approach to President Donald Trump to win in the future.

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“Our job right now is to fight,” Murphy declared at an event hosted by the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, a venue frequented by candidates of both parties who are testing the presidential waters.

“We have to show people who they are and who we are, and it does involve a level of fight and sometimes a level of confrontation that can be uncomfortable,” he added.

Murphy said Democrats hurt themselves by relying on overwrought, consultant-driven messaging, including on significant pieces of legislation passed under President Joe Biden that the party believed would help carry it to victory in the 2024 presidential election. He pointed to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which allowed Medicare to negotiate prices for some prescription drugs, as one key example.

“What was our message on prescription drugs? Probably, you never remembered,” Murphy said, before mocking Democratic talking points about the bill at the time. “It was that we’re going to use the bulk purchasing powers of Medicare to negotiate down the price of the 10 most ― you’ve lost it, right? You’ve lost people.”

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He offered a simpler message that drew applause from the audience: “Cap the price of every single drug in this country and limit the profits of the drug industry.”

The Democratic Party, he argued, needed to broaden its appeal to win over voters who may not agree on everything, including on cultural issues like guns.

“This party has become kind of addicted to litmus tests, and that made us a pretty ideologically pure party, but it made us a losing party,” he said, in a veiled reference to litmus tests on key progressive issues that helped Trump beat former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

Murphy, considered a potential 2028 presidential contender, urged Democrats to get more aggressive and creative in pushing back against Trump. The information economy, he argued, has changed to the point where voters consume media in different places, and Democratic officials shouldn’t be shy about calling out Trump.

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“He floods the zone, we have to flood the zone,” Murphy said. “There’s this idea in Democratic politics that you have to sort of reserve and hoard your capital and then wait to pounce. No. We need to be posting not one video a day, but five, six, 10 videos a day.”

And he urged Democrats to get more real, calling the party “way too careful.”

“We shouldn’t be vetting everything we say through our sort of consultancy filters,” he said. “Say what you feel... Show your outrage and don’t be worried about using the wrong word or the wrong phrase. People want to see who you are.”

Still, Murphy was more guarded on the topic of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has taken the brunt of the blame for the party’s failure to extend health care protections to millions of Americans in its 41-day standoff with Republicans over government funding. Many House Democrats and Democratic candidates running for office have called on Schumer to step aside as leader.

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“I think that the party continues to be divided, and I think that would be a problem for any leader,” Murphy told reporters after the event. “So I think the caucus has to be sharper. I think leadership has to be sharper, but the caucus has to make a decision to stay together, or any leader is going to be hamstrung by a rank-and-file that certainly doesn’t understand the importance of unity at this moment.”

Pressed again about Schumer, Murphy said, “He has an opportunity to sort of prove that we can repair from the damage that we have done to our cause.”