Murphy Recycles Declaration of Democracy in Danger 

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., is recycling the “democracy in danger” declaration as he opposes Senate Republican appropriations efforts. 

Murphy, who is the Democratic Deputy Conference Secretary in the Senate, explained that in his view working with Senate Republicans to fund the government through appropriations bills was “putting a bipartisan veneer of endorsement on an illegal process that’s ultimately part of [Trump’s] campaign to destroy our democracy.” 

As Politico recently reported, Murphy has in the past few weeks come out against every spending measure that has been moved forward during the Senate Appropriations Committee markups when he was present in the process. He also voted against the Senate’s stopgap funding bill in March, which Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. was criticized by some Democrats for allowing to become law. 

The strident opposition to the GOP agenda coupled with media appearances, including on a notable social conservative’s podcast, has prompted prognostication that the Connecticut senator may be setting himself up for a future presidential run. As such Murphy’s rhetoric is a potential bellwether for whether Democrats will continue to discuss American democracy’s state in such bleak terms.

Democracy in danger rhetoric was a mainstay during the final months of last year’s presidential race with then-President Joe Biden declaring at the Democratic National Convention, “We saved democracy in 2020, and now we must save it again in 2024.” 2024 Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris had urged voters to imagine “Donald Trump with no guardrails.” But those arguments fell flat to the extent that Trump managed to surge not only an electoral college win from all seven swing states, but also a plurality of the popular vote. Trump’s popular vote victory was the first time the Republicans managed such a feat since 2004.

But the talking point has not abated with Trump’s decisive victory. In a recent interview with Stephen Colbert, Harris said, “I always believed that as fragile as our democracy is, our systems would be strong enough to defend our most fundamental principles, and I think right now that they’re not as strong as they need to be.” 

Such rhetoric has been a part of the discourse around the president and his supporters for about ten years at this point. 

One of the most notable proponents of the line about democracy in peril was none other than former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. In a July 2016 speech given in Springfield, Illinois, Clinton said, “This man [Trump] is the nominee of the party of Lincoln. We are watching it become the party of Trump, and that’s not just a huge loss for our democracy, it is a threat to it.” 

The mainstream media has also taken to portraying the president and his supporters as opponents to the American system of government. “Trump’s triumph threatens an already battered democracy, experts say,” ran one headline from the Washington Post published a day after the president won reelection in 2024. That paper had previously unveiled the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” in February 2017 as Trump was beginning his first term. “Capitalizing on Democrats’ weakness, President Trump is winning his battle to undermine democracy in this country,” begins a recent opinion article in the New York Times.

For now, Murphy’s dogged approach to appropriations is getting a decidedly lukewarm reception from Democrat colleagues.

“He has the right to his opinion, and I just have the opinion that the more we can do to get bills done, the better chance we have of getting better things for our country.” Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash, the Senate Appropriations Committee vice chair, remarked.

“I’m not his spokesperson, so all I can say is: We’ve been demanding a bipartisan process. So when there’s a step in that direction, I think it’s our obligation to try to be constructive,” Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii., commented.

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