Leftists are in a state these days. Their catastrophic defeat on Nov. 5 has not, however, led them to any self-reflection. Instead, they’re full of fury and righteous indignation over Trump’s victory, and instead of seeing it for what it actually is, many leftists are taking it as proof that America is exactly how they’ve been defaming it all these years: racist, sexist, and hateful to the extent that voters rejected the perfect candidate, the candidate of joy, in favor of a “convicted felon,” a “rapist,” and the enemy of all that is good, Donald J. Trump. Now, however, a couple of Democrats in Congress are showing signs of being on the verge of an actual independent thought.
They’re not household names by any means, but one is in the Senate and the other is in the House, so they’re not exactly guys ranting on the street corner, either. Fox News reported Monday that instead of indulging in the usual finger-pointing and self-pity, they “issued blistering assessments of where their party stands after Tuesday night’s overwhelming election defeat and offered suggestions about changes that Democrats need to make.” They’re still Democrats, so they still don’t see the full magnitude of the damage the left has done to the country and the corresponding disgust that many Americans feel toward the leftists who have done that damage, but they’re taking steps toward the light.
Sen. Chis Murphy (D-Conn.) wrote on X, "That was a cataclysm. Electoral map wipeout. Senate D practical ceiling is now 52 seats. R's is 62. Time to rebuild the left. We are out of touch with the crisis of meaning/purpose fueling MAGA. We refuse to pick big fights. Our tent is too small."
As if that weren’t enough, he added, “The left has never fully grappled with the wreckage of fifty years of neoliberalism, which has left legions of Americans adrift as local places are hollowed out, rapacious profit seeking cannibalizes the common good, and unchecked new technology separates and isolates us.” All that was well taken except the Marxist-tinged bit about “rapacious profit” cannibalizing the common good; Murphy would have been more correct to say that rapacious government overreach and endless expansion has cannibalized the common good.
Murphy also said, “The things that mattered are disappearing. We spend half as much time with friends as a generation ago. Hard work no longer guarantees economic mobility. Institutions (like churches) are delegitimized. Place based identity evaporates as we all become ‘global citizens.’" As the left has been the engine of America’s de-Christianization and globalization, it’s astounding to hear a Democrat senator say that. It’s even more astonishing to hear a Democrat senator lament that “hard work no longer guarantees economic mobility,” because that is a result of the left’s indifference to inflation and love affair with ever-higher taxes.
Murphy inched even closer to reality when he said: “Does racism explain part of the attraction of the right's nativism? Of course. But mass deportation is a (terrible) response to Americans' real sense they are helpless in the face of global forces (like increased migration). The left largely ignores this pain.” His claim of racism on the right was to be expected, and his dismissal of mass deportation as a “terrible” solution to the problem was characteristic of a leftist, but it was remarkable that he admitted that the left ignores the pain that mass migration is causing to many Americans who can’t find work or are working extra jobs to try to keep up while migrants have lavish benefits handed to them.
Above all, Murphy said, “We don't listen enough; we tell people what's good for them.” Yep. The left’s arrogance, condescension, smugness, and refusal to admit that patriots had any point, dismissing them all as racist, bigoted xenophobes, cost Harris the election as much as anything else did.
Related: OK, Here’s the REAL Reason Why Trump Won
Meanwhile, Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.) wrote on X, “First and foremost, if you're using the words ‘moderate’ or ‘progressive,’ you're missing the whole f***ing point. It's not ideological. It's about who fights for the people vs. who further empowers and enables the elites.” Like Murphy, he sounded a Marxist note: “I put affordability front and center every day. Most importantly, I told folks exactly who it was that was ripping them off, and I grounded it locally. It's the billionaires and big corporations making record-breaking profits while the rest of us struggle.” He didn’t say anything about big government fattening itself at the expense of the people.
Ryan also, however, showed that he had at least some common sense, a commodity that is in extremely short supply on the left: “I went on Fox News – like, a lot – to call out Biden for not doing enough to restore order at the border. To be clear, Trump's approach isn't right either. But when the system is broken, you call it out and you work to fix it, no matter who is in charge.” All right.
After explaining some of his areas of agreement with each side, he said, “It's not enough to throw these seemingly disparate policies at people. We must articulate a unifying principle, and clearly tell folks who’s at fault. For me, it was Freedom. and Patriotism. And the fault lies with the same elites, in both parties, who've run this country for far too long.” Calling out the uniparty? Hey, for a leftist, this guy does actually have some sense.
Will Murphy and Ryan chart a new course for the Democrat party? Nah. The party of Andrew Jackson and FDR and JFK is way too far gone for that. But it’s good to see that not everyone with a D after his name is absolutely, gleefully, unrepentantly bat-guano insane.
