Che GueMurphy speaks

He said the ideas that folks like he and Bernie are suggesting aren't "that fundamentally radical" but they are trying to "return us to a world in which we had a little bit higher level of commitment to each other."

"Don't be afraid of it because the world we are looking to build is one that is not going to be super unfamiliar to you" (Not if you’ve studied the history of communist regimes, no)

Murphy Claims Socialism Isn't Radical, Trump's Movement Rooted In "False, Perverse, Misogynist, Racist Nostalgia"...

Sen. Chris Murphy joined Anand Giridharadas on his October 29 podcast to talk about "fighting the authoritarian takeover, remaking the Democratic Party, and how you, today, can cure the disease that led to Trumpism."

According to Giridharadas, Murphy is one of the clearest, loudest and most unafraid voices against Trump.

Giridharadas wanted to get some insight from Murphy on what reflecting has been done by Democrats in the nearly one year since Trump won. 

"I think many people were not ready for how dizzying the campaign of destruction was going to be," said Murphy. "Trump and his crowd, they were ready this time, and from day one they began to unwind our democracy."

Murphy couldn't explain why no one on the democrat side has otherwise taken stock of what went wrong for them. He complained that corporate America just joined Trump, and blamed the media for not doing any "stock-taking."

"But inside the democratic party... there are some interesting sort of strains of thought, but I would say that almost all of the energy has been spent on trying to figure out how to engage in conventional resistance and we are still stuck as a party that is probably still unelectable in broad swaths of the country, as you know," said Murphy who has his own take on how to address the Democrat Party's "electability problem."

"My view, which is I think kind of the view of people like Bernie and Elizabeth and Mamdani, has not taken root as the conventional mainstream view," said Murphy. "I think most people just want to run back the same version of the democratic party that has gotten our clock cleaned in election after election."

Giridharadas pointed out that Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Zohran Mamdani scare certain kinds of people -- like those who fear socialism -- and asked Murphy to explain why they shouldn't be afraid of those "ideas". 

…. He said the ideas that folks like he and Bernie are suggesting aren't "that fundamentally radical" but they are trying to "return us to a world in which we had a little bit higher level of commitment to each other."

"Don't be afraid of it because the world we are looking to build is one that is not going to be super unfamiliar to you," Murphy promised.

…. Murphy said Trump is just a symptom of an underlying disease -- "a country that is having trouble finding connection to purpose and to meaning" -- and just beating Trump won't be enough to fix that. 

Murphy doesn't want his party to put its "thumbs on the scales against candidates who have really big ideas for how you deconstruct concentrated power in this country"... a comment he made in reference to Graham Platner, the democrat candidate in Maine who identifies as a communist and has a Nazi tattoo.

Giridharadas asked if it was possible to have more candidates like that -- in a scaled and systematic way -- without having to first change leadership in the Democrat party.

Murphy assumed the question was about Chuck Schumer whom Murphy says has "got a fucking hard job because this caucus is pretty diverse." Plus, Murphy said there aren't enough Democrats willing to take risks and "live outside the sort of conventional boundaries of politics at a moment of real peril like this."

Then Murphy said he wants to make sure that Democrats "do not sign onto a budget that funds a corrupt Department of Justice, a corrupt Department of Homeland Security, a corrupt FCC."

He further suggested we are in the "middle of the authoritarian takeover" and anyone not willing to stand up to the authoritarians should just step aside right now.