Blue state Democrats issue scathing reflection on election loss: 'We're out of touch'

Two blue state Democrats in Congress 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.

"That was a cataclysm," Connecticut Sen. Chis Murphy posted on X. "Electoral map wipeout. Senate D practical ceiling is now 52 seats. R's is 62."

"Time to rebuild the left," Murphy wrote. "We are out of touch with the crisis of meaning/purpose fueling MAGA. We refuse to pick big fights. Our tent is too small."

In a lengthy X thread that had more than 7 million views on Monday morning, Murphy said Democrats "don't listen enough; we tell people what's good for them" and skip "past the way people are feeling (alone, impotent, overwhelmed) and straight to uninspiring solutions (more roads! bulk drug purchasing!) that do little to actually upset the status quo of who has power and who doesn't."

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Democrat Rep. Pat Ryan, left, and Democrat Sen. Chris Murphy (Getty)

Murphy acknowledged a disconnect between everyday working class voters and the "elites" and suggested the party needs to more openly embrace candidates who reject the status quo. 

"And when progressives like Bernie aggressively go after the elites that hold people down, they are shunned as dangerous populists," Murphy wrote. "Why? Maybe because true economic populism is bad for our high-income base."

"We cannot be afraid of fights – especially with the economic elites who have profited off neoliberalism. The right regularly picks fights with elites – Hollywood, higher ed, etc. Democrats (e.g. the Harris campaign) are tepid in our fights with billionaires and corporations."

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Supporters react as Democrat presidential nominee Vice President Harris concedes the election during a speech at Howard University on Nov. 6, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Murphy told his followers that "real economic populism should be our tentpole."

"Those are hard things for the left," Murphy wrote in the final post of the thread. "A firm break with neoliberalism. Listen to poor and rural people, men in crisis. Don't decide for them. Pick fights. Embrace populism. Build a big tent. Be less judgmental. But we are beyond small fixes."

New York Democrat Rep. Pat Ryan, who won re-election in New York’s 18th Congressional District despite the red wave that swept across most of the country, also put forward a post-mortem on social media that was seen by millions of users.

"First and foremost, if you're using the words ‘moderate’ or ‘progressive’ you're missing the whole f***ing point," Ryan wrote on X. "It's not ideological. It's about who fights for the people vs. who further empowers and enables the elites."

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Vice President Harris delivers her presidential election concession speech on Nov. 6, 2024. (AP/Jacquelyn Martin)

Ryan explained his take on why he was able to win as a Democrat in a pro-Republican climate and said he "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."

Ryan wrote, "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."

Various camps within the Democratic Party have been pointing fingers at each other Democrat presidential candidate Vice President Harris' loss to President-elect Donald Trump last week.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders pinned blame for the loss on the Democratic Party for "abandoning" the working class, sparking a rebuke from former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

"It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change," Sanders posted to X last week, accompanied by a press release on the election results. "And they’re right."

Pelosi responded that the party has not left the working class behind in favor of kowtowing to "big-money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party," as Sanders had argued in his press release.