Senator Chris Murphy on “The Politics of Loneliness”

SARA SIDNER, HOST: Our next guest, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy is pushing to reform America’s election laws to prevent another January 6th, and he is also backing legislation to confront the epidemic of gun violence. Here he tells Walter Isaacson why he thinks more Republicans are now willing to cross the aisle to get things done.

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WALTER ISAACSON, HOST: Thank you, Sara. And, Senator Chris Murphy, welcome to the show.

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): Thanks for having me.

ISAACSON: You are one of the sponsors of the electoral reformat that they’re going to try to vote on, you and the Senate, again, try to vote on before the end of the year, attach it to a bill that has the path. Explain to me what is in the bill and why it’s so important to pass it now?

MURPHY: So, the law governing how we count electors to choose the president of the United States dates from 1887, that is a long time ago. And what we saw in the last presidential election is the weaknesses in that law, President Trump proved at a very old, very frail law, and exposed some real vulnerabilities. The most notable is of him to get Vice President Pence to effectively cancel certain electoral votes. But he also endeavored to try to use some new legal theories that would allow for states to substitute a state legislature’s judgment for the electorate’s judgment. We got together, a group of us, Republicans and Democrats, and decided that we wanted to rewrite the way that we count electors, the way that we conduct the Electoral College to make it much less likely that any candidate can manipulate that vote, to make it much less likely the wrong president, essentially, is chosen at the Electoral College. And we did that. We came together, wrote a bill that makes clear that the vice president is ceremonial, really cuts down any of the chances that state legislators can substitute their judgment for the electorate. Raises the threshold by which Congress can overturn the judgment of a state’s decision. I think it’s a really good piece of legislation. It does not eliminate the possibility that the 2024 election could be stolen, but it raises the bar for malfeasance.

ISAACSON: We’re coming up to the second anniversary of the January 6th insurrection, and House of Representatives just did criminal referrals relating to that somewhat with Former President Trump. With this electoral reform bill do anything to prevent something like that January 6th insurrection?

MURPHY: I mean, I don’t think there is any piece of legislation that we can pass that would stop someone like Donald Trump from engaging in open insurrection against the government if a future presidential candidate wants to muster his supporters in a violent mob, there is not a piece of legislation that can prevent that from happening. That fortunately becomes a matter of law enforcement. What this bill will do though is lower the temperature around that critical day. The reason why Donald Trump mustered all of those people in Washington that day was because he was going to get a vote. He was going to get a vote in the House and the Senate to throw out the electors from Arizona and Pennsylvania. Why? Because under the previous law, one senator and one member of the House were required in order to enforce that vote. Under this proposal, you would now need 20 percent of both bodies in order to force that vote. It’s something that Donald Trump didn’t have in the United States Senate in 2021. So, it does make it harder for that sort of debate to even begin in the Congress about throwing out electors and that potentially makes it a little bit harder for corrupt presidents or a corrupt candidate to convince his supporters that they can come to Washington and try to disrupt the count.

ISAACSON: This year marks the 10th anniversary of the killings of the Sandy Hook Elementary School. You just become a senator. Tell me how that affected your career.

MURPHY: Well, I had just been elected to the United States Senate when Sandy Hook occurred. I was actually the congressman representing that district at the time. But, you know, it changed my political career. I’m embarrassed that I, you know, didn’t work on the issue of gun violence before Sandy Hook. I should have been working on this issue. It was plaguing cities in my state. But it was a wakeup call to me, and to the nation. And I decided to devote my career to trying to change the laws of this country and make Sandy Hook less likely. Obviously, we have seen mass shooting after mass shooting, spikes in homicides all over the country. But this year, you know, we did finally pass, first time in 30 years, a major gun safety initiative. And I am proud that our movement has now become strong enough. That movement has, as part of it, many of the families, many students from Sandy Hook, and I’m very proud of them.

ISAACSON: You know, firearms is the leading cause of death among young kids. What could be done next? What would you like to see happen after this reform of the past year?

MURPHY: So, what we have in this country is a massive black market in firearms, and that is how firearms often end up in the hands of young kids. So, background checks is the quickest way to stop that black market because how the black market starts is a criminal trafficker, buying a whole bunch of weapons in a state where there is no background checks. The second thing we should take a look at is the safe storage of firearms. A lot of the shootings are accidental. A lot of the shootings involve a kid taking a weapon from an adult. And that’s an area where there might not be as much politics, right, because the gun owners, even NRA members, generally agree that storing weapons safely, locking them up, is important and part of your responsibility. So, these are two things that, I think, we could do. Assault weapons ban, those are harder to get passed in a split Congress. But safe storage, background checks, those are certainly within the realm of responsibility.

ISAACSON: In this period of hyper partisanship, you and Texas senator, John Cornyn, have actually been able to work together. Tell me about your relationship and whether or not we can get back to that model, which we had this 20 or 30 years ago in the Senate?

MURPHY: Yes. I mean, as everyone understands, this world still runs on relationships and friendships. And so does Washington, D.C. John Cornyn, conservative Republican from Texas, a different generation than me, we have, you know, struck up a friendship and we trust each other. And so, after Uvalde happened in his state, I mean, he was personally moved by what happened here. He wanted to respond. He felt like he had to as a public servant from Texas. But he wasn’t willing to go as far as I was. But he knew that I was willing to find that common ground. I do think that there are, at least in the Senate, more Republicans willing to find common ground than prior to January 6th of last year. I do think that there are a bunch of Republicans of in my body, who want to show the democracy can still work, because they’re really worried about that potential for insurrection. It remains to be seen whether there will be Republicans in the House next year who will be interested in the same thing. But, you know, in the last two years, it wasn’t just the gun safety bill, it was the chips act. Restarting the American manufacturing industry for microchips. It was the bipartisan infrastructure bill. It’s the electoral count act that we just talked about. There are a bunch of Republicans who are willing to work in the Senate. And I think that all springs forth from this sort of desire to show that American democracy is not worth throwing out.

ISAACSON: You recently — I read it last night, it’s great — wrote an essay about loneliness. Explain to me how you came on to that topic and how it intersects with the politics you’re talking about?

MURPHY: I mean, listen. So, I think at the heart of many of the issues we’ve been talking about, whether it be the epidemic or gun violence in this nation or whether it be the threats to our democracy, is a real metaphysical crisis in this country. The stats tell you is that more people feel intense loneliness, feel aloneness than ever before. Kids report epidemic levels of isolation. 60 percent of teenagers reported intense loneliness. And that loneliness, listen, sometimes it leads the cataclysmic violence, but most of the time it just leads to sadness and fear and anger. And when people are angry, ultimately, they look for identity in dangerous places. That’s where sort of demigods’ train. And so, I think, as policymakers, we can’t spend all of our time and solutions, right? Sometimes it’s worthwhile to just kind of take the temperature of the nation, sort of try to register how people are feeling and get some consensus around that question first. So, I’ve been talking about this problem of aloneness and isolation, because I actually thing the solutions are not that political. You know, whether it be sort of regulating social media so that it is a healthier place, that doesn’t sort of feed feelings of isolation, or whether it’s rebuilding our local communities, our downtowns, you know, making our local sports leagues and civics clubs healthy places again. I mean, none of that stuff is super political. And so, I feel like, if we talk about how Americans are feeling, in particular, this feeling, it’s a platform for bipartisan cooperation.

ISAACSON: You talk about the breakdown of local communities, things got globalize, you know, jobs were outsourced, technology, free trade did things. Did we make a bit of mistake and you’ve talk about economic nationalism a bit, is that a way to correct that mistake?

MURPHY: I do. I think it’s time for both parties to admit that we made a mistake. It was understandable. I mean, I think, you know, it was easy to believe this narrative that ultimately the benefits of globalization would come our way, and that the benefits of technology would ultimately outweigh the downside. That’s not how it played out. What has happened is, you know, the good paying jobs, the sort of blue collar, aristocratic jobs that used to populate all these small cities in Connecticut left, and the jobs that replace them weren’t as good. We also sort of lost our local identity, right? I mean, we don’t go to our local butcher or our local grocery, do all of our shopping online. And that sort of identity that we attached to our place that we lived in was healthy. It’s been replaced by identity, sometimes political identities that are much less healthy. So, yes. I just think we need to have a really concerted policy of economic nationalism, bringing industry back home, better paying jobs that are things that are available today, but also rebuilding and subsidizing the health of our communities. That means, you know, local small businesses, churches, civic clubs, newspapers. I actually think it makes sense to spend money on those things so as to rebuild our culture and place that has been kind of gobbled up by this antiseptic one size fits all global economy in which our place-based identity is erased and replaced by things that are much more toxic.

ISAACSON: Well, you say spend money on it, I mean, should governments be spending money on local community newspapers or even local butchers?

MURPHY: Well, we spend plenty of money subsidizing companies and corporations in this country, why not make a decision to spend a little bit more time subsidizing local commerce? The answer is not to just say, it’s too hard. I think the downside of having lost local journalism, right, that is how we learned about our communities, that’s how we learned about our neighbors. I think there is a real social and political cost donation. And so, I just don’t believe the answer can be — no local news media is gone. I think we should think about ways that the public sector, we, as a collective, can help keep local news media afloat.

ISAACSON: How does this epidemic of loneliness breakdown demographically or ethnically?

MURPHY: I mean, the real epidemic is amongst young people. So, you’re talking about 60 percent, as I mentioned, sort of feel — a percentage of teenagers who are reporting intense feelings of loneliness, even worse, amongst teenage girls. And again, I just don’t think you can look at that huge rise in loneliness and isolation amongst teenagers as coincidental to the emergence of social media, Instagram, all of the — you know, all sort of — all the envy that is created by sort of looking at these sorts of manicured lives online that aren’t yours, ultimately seems like it’s really hurting our kids. There’s also plenty of evidence to suggest that there is something helping amongst white men in this country. You have suicide rates spiraling up amongst white man, often in rural areas. Generally, the numbers have been, you know, lower when we look at suicides, for instance, amongst African Americans or Hispanics. And there’s lots of theories for that. I think part of it is that, you know, years of oppression and subjugation have built kind of resilience in some populations in this country. White men who have been used to their position of influence and prioritization having sort of lost it very quickly. What comes with that often is a sense of panic in crisis. But it is young people, I think that have borne the brunt of this, which is why I sort of focused first on, you know, taking a look at protecting them from some of the excesses of a corrosive nature of the internet.

ISAACSON: You talk about this epidemic of loneliness and to some extent, economic disenfranchisement and lack of a community as being a real public health problem. But it also seems to me that it’s at the root of a lot of anger when they all feeling in our society, that it seems, maybe I’m wrong, a higher level of anger, especially when expressed in politics than we used to have. Is that right?

MURPHY: I think it is. There have been intense times in American politics before today, but there are all sorts of signs around us right now that something a bit different is happening. I mentioned, I think, in one of these pieces that I was sitting down with the head of TSA, and I sort of asked him about these viral videos of, you know, people on flights sort of erupting, and he says, no, it is not an anomaly, what you are seeing. This is happening all over the country, on planes, at airports, people are just, right now, on a very thin wire. I think the consequences certainly sort of leached into our politics, when you have candidates who trade on anger, like Donald Trump did, when people are lonely and thus, more angry, they tend to sort of run a little bit faster to candidates whose bases, whose foundation is built on division. So, yes, I think there is more anger in American culture today. Anger is driving our politics. And it’s just no doubt that there is a connection between loneliness and anger. Just think to yourself the times in your life where you have felt more lonely. For me, those are times when I’m a little bit quicker to anger. And so, I think it makes sense that that connection exists.

ISAACSON: You talk about the failure of demographic institutions here and around Europe, part of it too is the undermining of belief in the electoral system, that somehow how votes doesn’t — don’t count. How do we restore some sense that we are all in this together, that the democracy means we all have a voice?

MURPHY: Well, I think it first involves just a very vocal pushback on this idea that there is fraud in our elections. I think sometimes, Democrats are sort of too eager to — you know, sort of to adopt systems to protect against a threat that doesn’t exist. Listen, fine. Let’s make sure our elections are safe. But they are, and there is no evidence that anybody is out there stuffing ballot boxes. So, I just think we’ve got to be a little bit more vocal about that. And I think all of us just have to step back and, you know, talk about the importance of democracy in a multicultural society, right? Today, a lot of politicians view democracy, view government as the place where we air our grievances, right? It’s a forum in which to argue. But in a multicultural place like ours, in fact, it’s the opposite, it’s actually the place where we are supposed to sort out the differences. It’s the place where we are actually supposed to come and compromise because this is unnatural nation, right, without a place where you sort out all of your differences, America, by design, would explode. And so, I just think that — and I think that is why you have these Republicans who have decided to, you know, find compromise on the toughest issues out there, elections, guns, infrastructure because they have a feeling that we’ve got to start showing Americans that democracy is the place to sort out your differences, not a place to just yell at each other and argue.

ISAACSON: Senator Chris Murphy, thanks so much for joining us.

MURPHY: Thank you. Appreciate it.