Sen. Chris Murphy: 'We all bear responsibility' for President Biden's failed 2024 bid

Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said the loyalty Democrats showed President Joseph R. Biden haunted the party in the 2024 election.

Democrats are facing fresh questions around what they knew about Mr. Biden’s cognitive decline following the release of new books that shine a light on how his inner circle shielded him from scrutiny.

Mr. Murphy said Mr. Biden was sharp when he worked with him on gun legislation and developments in the Middle East in 2022 and 2023.

“But I admit that by 2024, the American public had made up their mind, right, that they wanted the Democratic Party to nominate somebody new, and it was absolutely a mistake for the party to not listen to those voters,” Mr. Murphy said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Asked whether he bears some responsibility for not recognizing Mr. Biden’s mental erosion, Mr. Murphy said, “I think we all bear responsibility.”

“Listen, and I think, you know, we maybe didn’t listen as early as we should have, in part because we have immense loyalty to this man who had led this country out of a pandemic, who had been maybe the most prodigious legislator as a president, the Inflation Reduction Act, the Infrastructure Act, the Bipartisan Gun Bill in a generation,” the Connecticut Democrat said.

“But ultimately, in retrospect, you can’t defend what the Democratic Party did because we are stuck with a madman, with a corrupt president in the Oval Office, and we should have given ourselves a better chance to win.”

The new book “Original Sin” by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson depicts how Mr. Biden’s inner circle tried to hide his mental decline, which was fully displayed in the first presidential debate, which marked the beginning of the end of his re-election push.