Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said he believes the Democratic Party as a whole is responsible for their loss in the 2024 presidential election, despite many of his fellow Democrats blaming former President Biden for the outcome.
On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” host Kristen Welker mentioned the new book from CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’s Alex Thompson, which delves into the end of Biden’s term and his ill-fated reelection campaign. Welker questioned Murphy on the book’s reports that top officials in the Biden White House attempted to cover up the former president’s mental decline.
While Murphy said he did not notice a decline in Biden — he saw “a president who was in control” — he noted that Americans “had made up their mind” that they wanted a fresh face.
When Welker pushed Murphy on whether Biden bears responsibility for the party’s loss, Murphy replied, “I think we all bear responsibility.”
“We maybe didn’t listen as early as we should have, in part because we have immense loyalty to this man who had led this country out of a pandemic, who had been maybe the most prodigious legislator as a president,” he said.
“But ultimately, in retrospect, you can’t defend what the Democratic Party did because we are stuck with a madman — with a corrupt president in the Oval Office — and we should have given ourselves a better chance to win,” Murphy continued.
Murphy’s statement comes amid a sea of criticism against Biden within the Democratic Party as it continues to recover from a devastating loss in November.
In the latest poll from The Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs, only about one-third of Democrats are “very optimistic” or “somewhat optimistic” about the future of their party — a huge drop from July 2024, when 6 in 10 Democrats said they had an optimistic view of their party.
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