YouSaid · the spoken record

Chris Murphy

lines on the record: 27
first: 2025-11-12
most recent: 2025-11-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“The key ingredient to keep the folks we need to stay straight from being corrupted when Donald Trump asks. So I wish it were more simple than that, but there's nothing more important than your ability to be present and to organize your friends and neighbors in being present during this moment.”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then lastly, just keep on turning out, right? There's this political science that says if 3% of a population is engaged in regular protest, it just becomes the secret sauce which puts enough sand in the gears to protect your democracy from destruction. The institutional players who would have to fold to essentially steal an election are just a little bit less likely to do that. And that includes the Supreme Court, right, who are full of politicians who want to do Trump's bidding but don't want to get too far outside of the political mainstream. They are all watching you. They are all watching whether No King's is just a once a year phenomenon or if it becomes a once a month phenomenon. And so the amount of buying you need to steal an election is pretty large and public protest at scale is probably”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think continuing to invest in good local and state leaders, which is why these elections were so critical. We made a smart play, which was to put a lot of focus and investment on governors and mayors who were the actual people who administer elections. And so I think we can have some confidence that right now in the states that are going to matter, we have people who are going to protect against these efforts to try to corrupt elections. I think we have to be.”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Talk all the time about what you're going to do to unrig the democracy and make the influential have less power and regular people have more power.”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, right, but it wasn't a short. It is just true, though, that Trump did get elected on his promise to drain the swamp. People do want to vote for a party that they think is going to clean up Washington. Right now, they don't really believe that we're much less corrupt than they are, in part because they don't hear us talking every single day about that reform agenda. And so that's why I get back to my prescription, my amateur prescription for the party, which is make the tent pole, make 75% of what you talk about unrigging the economy, big ideas to put money in people's pockets, simple ideas like mom dominy had, and”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So when I entered politics 20 years ago, so campaign finance reform, right? Getting big corrupt money out of politics was like a top three or four issue for Democrats. And something happened over the last 20 years in which it barely cracked the top 10. Some of it is that our democracy reform agenda migrated from big money to voting rights. And that's for good reason, because they were and still are trying to stop people from voting. But it is also true.”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You tell it together, and I think that you have confidence that the democracy part of the story actually does resonate and turn people out in a way that maybe it didn't a year ago. That's how I think about it.”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In which he hurts us to help he and his Mara Lago cronies. The only way he gets away with that is to destroy the democracy. Now I just explain that in 60 seconds, but you can actually explain that in 20 seconds. And so I think as long as we tell those two twin stories together, people will get it. And I also do think that we may have overlearned our lesson a little bit from 2024. Okay, it is true. Like our democracy message did not land in 2024, in large part because people were like, well, why do I want to save this version of democracy, right? Like this version of democracy sucks. It just works for the elites and the billionaire class. But that doesn't mean that people aren't plugged in right now to the actual threat. And the polling tells you that 80% of the American public thinks that we are in a political crisis right now, that more than half of Americans believe that their right to free speech is at risk.”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I don't think of it as two different stories. I think of it as the same story. It's not a story about his assault on costs and making people's economic lives more miserable and his assault on democracy. It's the same story in this sense. What is his goal as president? His goal as president is to turn the federal government into a vehicle to enrich himself and his billionaire friends and to steal from people, to raise your costs in order to reserve enough money so that he can give it all to his pals. That's deeply unpopular. Nobody wants that, right? The big beautiful bill is the biggest transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the rich in the history of the country. It's wildly unpopular. So how do you get away with just stealing from regular people? Well, you destroy the rule of law. You destroy the ability of people to dissent, to protest, and to stand up and object in elections. And so, yes, he is trying to turn our government into a kleptocratic oligarchy.”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Take a barrel over Niagara Falls, right? Which is what they're kind of doing right now politically, they are going to follow instructions like good cult members do.”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, they don't have any independent thought process. They are employees. They are. They just take direction from Donald Trump. Now, he did give him a direction on Tuesday morning in the Senate. He said go and change the rules of the Senate. But Senate Republicans sort of scratched their head because they just got wiped out on Tuesday. They are now increasingly likely to lose the Senate next November. And they thought to themselves, do I really want to change the rules so that when Democrats take control, we can very easily pass into law row versus Wade and universal background checks and an extension of the voting rights law with 50 votes. So maybe there are very limited moments when they choose not to follow his instructions. But no, by and large, even if he is telling them to”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To act more brazenly and more illegally, knowing that the Democratic Party really in the end doesn't have the stuff necessary to stand up to him. So I think if we don't get something for the people we say we have been fighting for, not only is there an immediate impact on them, but there is potential more pain coming from an emboldened President Trump”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I just think we have to have faith that there are a lot of reasons why the Republicans as this nightmare of premium increases starts to become more real are going to be willing to sit down and cut a deal. We made an offer just an hour ago to Republicans in which we said, listen, we will vote to end the shutdown today for a simple one year extension of these premiums. Previously, we've been talking about two or three years. We made a really, really simple offer here. I think as the days go on, it is going to be much harder for them to say, no, we can be reasonable. We were reasonable in the offer we made today, but to fold at this point, I think ultimately, A, doesn't help the people we're trying to help in our healthcare system, but also empowers Trump.”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think it's charitable to suggest that they don't care about hurting their voters. They actually do seem to care about hurting their voters in that they are deliberately trying to make the shutdown as painful as possible. These are nihilists that we're dealing with, which makes it hard. I mean, listen, I think you have to listen to Donald Trump. What did he say on Tuesday morning? He said that the shutdown is hurting Republicans. We should realize that most Americans have not actually gone on to the website to see what their new premium increase is. Many of the rates were just posted a few days ago. We should understand that Donald Trump's pollsters are telling their party's leaders that they are going to lose the midterms. They're going to lose both the House and the Senate if they don't stop these premium increases from going into effect.”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Republicans have put us in an impossible position. Listen, for me, coming off of Tuesday, when the people of this country told Democrats to fight, it would be heartbreaking for Democrats to make an immediate decision to stop fighting.”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I went down to South Florida on Monday with Elizabeth Warren and Tina Smith, and we went down there because in South Florida is the highest concentration of people who have ACA plans in some parts of South Florida, 25% of residents have an ACA plan. And if these premium increases go into effect, and you're talking about premiums double and you're tripling for folks across the country, but particularly in this area where we have a high concentration, we're talking about a meltdown of the healthcare system. And so, yes, there is deep pain in a shutdown. People are not getting paid. Food stamp benefits are at risk. Obviously, travel gets interrupted. But if we don't stop these premium increases from going into effect, there is life and death pain as well. And so it is important for my colleagues to realize that there is no good choice here.”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, first, let me say this in this audience. I know are people that right now have been furloughed, have been without a paycheck for over a month, people in this audience who have been illegally fired from their jobs first and foremost. Let me just say from the bottom of my heart, thank you for what you have done for this country. Thank you for the sacrifice that you have made.”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In your communication, not vetting every single thing you say through communications professionals. And then like a realization that if you don't, listen, I don't agree with Zorin on everything, but you are actually perceived as illegitimate to voters if all of your views are inside the 40-yard lines. Like if you don't have one or two things that a voter vehemently disagrees with you on, they get suspicious of you. And so just being true to, and also they have a bullshit sensitivity that voters probably didn't have as acutely decades ago. And so if you aren't authentic, if you don't have a couple views that are a little outside of the mainstream, you are actually not perceived as real and thus not electable as a Democrat in this country today.”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it almost got to the point of being hilarious. You look at Mom Dami's interviews in the final days of the campaign, and you couldn't ask him a question that he didn't answer by talking about the cost of living in New York, right? I mean, he was so laser-like focused on cost. There was a survey done of Democratic social media posts maybe two or three years ago, and it showed the percentage of our social media communications that talk about the economy. You know what the percentage was? 10%. One out of 10 messages from the Democratic Party is about economics. Now, we were talking about a lot of other stuff that's really important, but when you only spend 10% of your time talking about economics, people start to take the hint that maybe you are not going to fight as hard as you say you're going to fight when you get into office. So that relentless focus on the economy. Second, just being authentic and not being worried about making mistakes.”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Election is over. And so if you want to win in this country as a Democratic Party, be a big tent, be a pugilistically populist party, and spend money on permanent messaging and mobilization infrastructure.”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Dan, that means that you are letting people into the tent, perhaps nominating candidates or being present in areas where folks might not be with us on all of the social and cultural issues, might not even not be with us on an issue that I care deeply about, like guns. But I just think we have a better chance of convincing them if they step inside because they align with us on a higher minimum wage or on campaign finance reform. So I just think we have to become that big 10 party again. And then the last suggestion I'd have is just how we spend our money. We've been corrupted by a consultant class in the Democratic Party that tells us to spend money only on 30 second TV ads and digital ads. The Republican Party goes out and builds a permanent messaging and mobilization infrastructure. We talk about that all the time, but we end up spending almost all of our money on ads that disappear as soon as the last.”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Marketplace playing field. We've got to be a party that talks about who has too much power and exactly how we are going to radically and immediately shift power from people who have too much of it to people who have not enough of it. The second thing we have to do. Become a Big Ten party again. And I know this is a tough conversation for our party, but if it were up to me, we would be a party with two big tent poles, a tentpole that talks about unrigging our economy and a tempo that talks about unrigging our democracy, right? Getting big money, anonymous money, billionaire money out of politics. And by the way, admitting that you have to do big things to do that, like if it takes a constitutional amendment to get big money out of politics, we should be referring a constitutional amendment to get big money out of politics.”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do. And I'll give you sort of three simple ideas. First, I just do believe that it's not a mistake that the only person in our party that draws crowds of 50,000, 60,000, 70,000 is Bernie Sanders and AOC. I just think you have to tell a story, and you obviously are better at this than anybody, but you have to tell a story, a narrative. And that narrative has to not only tell you how we're going to make your lives better, but it has to tell people who's screwing them. And there's a true story out there about the corporate class, the billionaire class, consolidated economic power making people's lives miserable in this country. And the Democratic Party has become this sort of technocratic party that only talks about solutions, solutions that are largely about just rearranging the pieces on the existing.”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those places, but it probably doesn't get us over the hump in a place like Missouri or Florida where just two seconds ago we were running Canada that won. So I am certainly worried about the fact that the party has only 12 months to go before the midterm election and maybe hasn't done enough of that reckoning with what went wrong that will allow us to once again be a national party able to win everywhere.”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's exactly right. I think it's interesting that the party has not been able, I think, thus far to find the oxygen to do a real autopsy as to how we got to this point. And that's understandable at some level because we've had to be engaged in this, I mean, just epic scale fight to save the country. But the reality is if you look at the United States Senate, the best right now that Senate Democrats can do if we run the table is 52 seats because right now, for the time being, we're not competitive in a lot of states that just a decade ago we were competitive. And so we do have to wrestle with why we have lost a lot of low income voters, why rural areas have abandoned Democrats. And Trump will make us more electable in some of the...”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is not coincidental that we got that big victory at the first moment when the Democratic Party is showing real resolve, is showing a willingness to stand up to this guy. And so as I've said over the last few days, it's important for us to hear the voters and continue the fight that we're engaged in right now. So it was, I think, a really important moment. I think the result of Tuesday will be that a lot of folks who may be hidden thinking of sitting on the sidelines, some of the corporate elites, the higher education elites, the legal elites who were maybe thinking that Trump had already won this fight will now realize that the fight is still on. And I think it ends up giving confidence to a lot of people and a lot of institutional players all around the country to maybe re-enter the fight to save democratic norms and the foundation of our democracy.”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, democracy is for the time being still alive and well. And listen, obviously the election on Tuesday was first and foremost a referendum on Trump's corruption, his chaos. It was an important statement in every corner of the country that the American public are not ready to turn our government over to a would-be dictator. But there's another message I think that comes from Tuesday as well, and it's one that I hope Democrats are able to learn, which is that people want an opposition party that is willing to stand up and fight in this country.”
2025-11-12 · Pod Save America · Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source