He is weirdly variable. I have a running joke about this ("Murphy good again." I regret to inform you Murphy is bad again." etc.)

Classic for a Connecticut lib WASP: sincere and earnest but with many blind spots

yeah, like 70(?) percent of the time he says fairly progressive Democratic things & then the remainder will sound as if he wants to write for Compact Magazine.

I think that he, like many journalists, is very easily impressed by Heterodox Ideas & feels that he has to take them seriously & seek dialogue, etc.

He’s got a less shitty form of a Ro Khanna cycle. But every time he really gets cooking he swerves the car right into the ditch.

Key difference: Khanna usually endorses something vile by accident and then has to pass it off like he didn’t. Murphy’s sin is usually “we should hear them out” / try to understand them sort of bullshit well past when that’s tenable.

Had a feeling Schatz was lost when he came back here and then left for X a second time

Schatz is dead to me when he supported Schumer in the last CR

People were attacking him relentlessly, so I don't blame him.