After each major gun tragedy, Democrats in Congress, prompted by Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, try and fail to get some gun control laws passed.
Murphy had completed three terms in the U.S. House and was senator-elect in 2012 when 20 six and seven-year olds and six adults were shot and killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. He began his futile quest for badly needed gun legislation back then but never came close until now.
After 19 school children were gunned down in Uvalde, Texas by a young man using a semi-automatic weapon like the Sandy Hook killer’s, Murphy saw a chance to pass bipartisan gun legislation for the first time in the decade since Newtown.
But Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had other ideas. He wanted to quickly call for a vote on background checks legislation that had passed the House a year ago. The bill had nearly no chance in the evenly divided Senate but Schumer wanted to embarrass Republicans into putting their pro gun views on the record.
Murphy told The Washington Post he asked Schumer to give him time to get bipartisan support for some passable gun legislation. He got 10 days and, for the first time in years, modest gun legislation has been passed by the House and Senate.
President Biden hasn’t been particularly helpful, making a rare primetime speech calling on Congress to ban assault weapons and altering high-capacity magazines, bills that would never pass in the Senate. Maybe the president didn’t hear about Murphy’s 10 days.
All this is why you now hear Murphy being talked about for the Democratic presidential nomination and Biden being talked about as a one-term president — by his own party.
Biden would be 82 if and when he begins a second term and 86 when it ends. “‘He just seems old,’ a senior administration told me at a social function,” wrote veteran political journalist Mark Leibovich in an Atlantic article headlined “Why Biden Shouldn’t Run in 2024.”
Leibovich points out that only 48% of Democrats want to see Biden run again. With inflation on the rise and a recession looming, the Republicans are expected to win control of Congress in November, leaving Biden with little to no chance of accomplishing anything in the second half of his term.
Meanwhile, Murphy, who has said nothing about a presidential race, is beginning to get some mention, with the emphasis on “some.”
Chris Cillizza, editor-at-large of CNN, places Murphy on his list of 10 leading prospects for the Democratic nomination. The Connecticut senator only manages to come in tenth, after Ray Cooper, the little known Democratic governor of Republican North Carolina.
Cillizza, though, has nice things to say about Murphy. In addition to being the center of the gun negotiations, he writes that Murphy is “an articulate voice on liberal policy, but by no means a strict ideologue.”
There’s also a positive evaluation by veteran president watcher Stuart Rothenberg , who says that Murphy “seems to understand that politics is the art of accomplishing the art of the possible, not merely aiming for the impossible and blaming the opposition.”
This approach doesn’t seem to be favored by the top three on Cillizza’s list of Democratic prospects: Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders. We should stress that this is one of those “if the election were held today” lists. I wouldn’t bet on any of the top three when the election is really held in November 2024.
The other prospects are Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in fourth place, followed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, Cooper and Murphy. Some big names but not a terribly inspiring group.
There’s a Republican list too. Donald Trump is first — if the election were held today — followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former VP Mike Pence, Sen. Tim Scott, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Virginia Gov. Greg Youngkin, Florida Sen. Rick Scott and Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas.
Again, some big names but not a terribly inspiring group and, here and there, some depressing possibilities like Trump and Cruz. So maybe Murphy should run.
If Murphy ran and won, he’d be the first president from Connecticut. Though born across the border in White Plains, N.Y., Murphy graduated from Wethersfield High School and got his law degree from UConn. He was first elected to the State House at 25.
True, George W. Bush was born in New Haven while his father was at Yale, but he got out of town when he was around 2 and became a Texan, so, if you don’t mind, we won’t count him.
Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dickahles0@gmail.com.
