Democrats are doing a lot of post-election navel-gazing as they ponder what went wrong for them last week and how they might emerge from the political wilderness.
That includes Sen. Chris Murphy, the Connecticut Democrat who's made a career out of attacking gun owners and the firearms industry. In a thread on X/Twitter, the gun control advocate even came close to admitting the Democrats need a new direction when it comes to his pet issue.
10/ Those are hard things for the left.
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) November 10, 2024
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.
Murphy almost gets it, but his arrogance and elitism is still getting in the way. It's not a matter of "letting" people into the Democrats' tent who aren't 100% with them on guns or climate. It's that those voters who may economic populists and Second Amendment supporters don't want to be in that tent with Murphy to begin with.
Democrats tried, in their ham-handed way, to put Murphy's message into practice this election cycle. Kamala Harris touted her ownership of a Glock, while Tim Walz went on a photo-op/hunt to show the ticket's supposed moderation on gun issues. Harris said she supported the Second Amendment, but also said that bans on so-called assault weapons wouldn't tread on our right to keep and bear arms.
While the Democrats tweaked their messaging, their values remained the same (to borrow a phrase from Harris). They claimed to support the right to keep and bear arms, but could never articulate what that support actually meant in practice. Harris couldn't even explain how she went from supporting a ban on handguns in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. to supposedly embracing our Second Amendment rights. That should have been a compelling conversion story... but only if she really did change her mind. In the end, Harris' outreach to gun owners was so inauthentic that it failed to give gun voters a good reason to vote for her, especially when the Trump campaign's message was simple: we're not going to let anyone mess with your right to keep and bear arms.
Murphy's right about one thing: small fixes aren't going to help the Democrats compete in rural America, particularly when it comes to Second Amendment issues. It's not about rebranding or massaging the messaging. It's their policies that are turning off gun voters, and for good reason.
You can't support the Second Amendment and banning the most popular and common rifles in the country. You can't support the Second Amendment while imposing so many "gun-free zones" that the right to carry is limited to a few sidewalks and wilderness areas. You can't support the right to bear arms while charging $1,000 or more to apply for a carry permit, or making folks wait a year or more before they learn if they've been approved. Heck, you can't support the Second Amendment while making it impossible for non-residents to bear arms when they visit states like California, Massachusetts, or New York.
Murphy wants gun owners to come into the Democrats' tent, but he doesn't want to give them a seat at the table. He can preach about Democrats listening to rural voters, "poor people", and "men in crisis", but is he willing to let those groups lead if it means rejecting the gun control lobby and the tens of millions of dollars they spend on Democratic candidates?
I highly doubt it. And honestly, even if Murphy did have a change of heart, he's not exactly a credible messenger for gun owners at this point. Murphy (and the rest of the Democratic leadership, to be honest) have denigrated and dismissed Second Amendment supporters as either uninformed dupes of the gun lobby or insurrectionists ready to declare war on the government when the truth of the matter is that most gun owners and Second Amendment supporters simply want to be able to protect themselves, their families, and their communities without hassle, harassment, or being blamed for the actions of criminals.
If Democrats want to compete in rural America, as well as to stop the erosion of support in urban and suburban areas that was evident in last week's election results, they have to stop treating the Second Amendment as a problem to be solved and start treating it as a right worthy of protection. That's not a small fix, and I'm not convinced it's a step most Democratic politicians are willing to take even if it's a path that would lead them out of the political wilderness in which they find themselves.
