...Many of Murphy’s liberal critics are influential online or in Democratic Party politics. Kaivan Shroff, a Democratic attorney and activist with more than 117,000 followers on X, declared, “It’s gross for you to amplify hate group Turning Point USA’s Benny Johnson.”
Eric Kleefeld, a senior writer for the liberal media watchdog, Media Matters for America, asked, “Anybody out there willing to primary Chris Murphy, before he accidentally becomes a total horse-shoe bro?”
Louis Peitzman, editor-in-chief of news outlet Best Life, deadpanned, “Did you fall and hit your head.”
Murphy’s haters are, of course, well within their rights to argue that Murphy is naive about the potential for persuading people like Anthony, or building a populist coalition with politicians sympathetic to Anthony’s worldview.
....Murphy believes that working-class people on the political right and left have more in common with one another than elites on either side of the aisle. He also thinks that progressives like him can collaborate with right-wing populists like Republican Sens. J.D. Vance (Ohio) and Josh Hawley (Mo.) on select issues like trade and antitrust policy.
That’s likely what Murphy meant when he said that Anthony’s song shows the “path to realignment” ― a reorganization of politics based on shared skepticism of corporate power.
“If you study the developing New Right inside the conservative movement, you’ll see early signs of a potential realignment amongst people in this country who may not share the same views on abortion or civil rights, but who do believe that our economy and the state of American kids and families have become so unhealthy that government has to take some new action,” Murphy said in April.
