Chris Murphy believes a political realignment is coming — it’s just a matter of which party will be willing to embrace it first.

He recalls talking this through at dinner a few years ago with JD Vance, who was then the U.S. senator from Ohio. Would Republicans broaden their coalition first through economic progressivism? Or would Democrats beat them to the punch with more openness toward social conservatives who align with the party on an economic vision?

Vance, whom Murphy saw as someone willing to buck GOP orthodoxy at times, agreed with his theory. The Connecticut Democrat said it opened the door to a partnership on issues reflecting their shared belief in restoring the economy to work for Americans fed up with the current system. Even in an election year, Murphy said, Vance called in early 2024 to work on a bill to ban college-degree requirements for federal jobs.

But the bill didn’t come together, and Vance became Donald Trump’s vice presidential nominee months later. Years later, Murphy believes it’s still ripe for the taking.

“The collapse of my collaboration with Vance was a microcosm of the larger story of American politics today,” Murphy writes in his new book, released on Tuesday. “There is, indeed, a realignment available to a political candidate or movement that is willing to capture it.”

Murphy argues that Trump and his close allies on the right don’t have the desire to take it up. But Democrats, to his chagrin, may not be ready either. “So then why not us? Why does the Democratic Party not take the necessary steps to bring together traditional progressives and disaffected conservatives to create a new coalition?”

“Voters chose Trump because they wanted a revolution,” he continues. “But my party doesn’t yet seem completely ready to seize this moment. That is tragic, unacceptable, and worth having a fight over.”

In his second book, “Crisis of the Common Good: The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America,” Murphy explores the societal and economic forces that he believes have shaped modern-day American politics, bred division and led to a country that has put a premium on individualism over collectivism.

To Murphy, who has been one of the loudest Trump critics, the president is not the source of this shift but a byproduct of decades of policy choices, technological changes and the prioritization of profit. And the senator still views government as a vehicle for change, despite its failure to address root issues for the last few decades.

He seeks to define six “cults” that he argues have precipitated a lack of connection that once seemingly tied communities together in the workplace, social settings and beyond: profit, technology, consumption, corruption, credentialism and globalism.

Murphy attributes many things to these phenomena: the decimation of labor unions in recent decades, tech giants who have profited off of the addictive usage of social media by minors, and the disruption of downtowns and neighborhoods that have lost their unique charm.

He also provides a scathing look at corporations and billionaires whom he claims have used extractive practices to squeeze as much profit as possible out of consumers. Some things, Murphy argues, should remain untouchable for the greater good and shouldn’t be monetized just for the sake of generating greater profit.

He puts a spotlight on the company that owns his teenage son’s traveling hockey league, which is backed by a private equity firm. He recounts watching a parent recording a game from a corner of the arena that didn’t provide the best view. The parent said they feared getting in trouble and hurting the team’s standings since there’s a ban on live-streaming. Black Bear Sports Group offers a paid streaming service to watch the games.

That led him to introduce a new bill this month to ban “vulture” practices of investors that “causes harm or creates long-term risk of harm to an acquired entity in order to extract profit.” (Black Bear Sports Group told USA Today in a statement that it “looks forward to engaging with lawmakers and sharing all the ways we are growing youth hockey” including free and low-cost programs.)

“Our waning concern for the common good — for broad, shared prosperity that ensures every American a chance at a dignified, purposeful life — is the underlying crisis that has fueled Trump’s brand of empty, divisive, bombastic politics,” he writes.

Months after writing this book, Murphy weighed in on whether he still feels if Democrats are open to embracing what he sees as an inevitable realignment.

Does he believe the party can be more tolerant of voters who want to challenge major profit centers and consolidated power but don’t share the same views on traditional Democratic priorities like gun reforms, reproductive rights and climate change?

“That doesn’t mean those aren’t really important issues,” Murphy said. “But my belief is that there are a lot of people who want us to try harder to find the places where we do agree, and I would argue that those places, creating a common-good capitalism, regulating technology, reforming our democracy, are really important too.”

Murphy himself believes he was too stringent. He acknowledged his role in applying a litmus test on guns when Democrats had a crowded presidential primary in 2020. While the issue is still a central focus for him, he argues it may have shut people out of the party and led to a smaller coalition for Democrats.

Speaking with The Connecticut Mirror prior to the book’s publication, Murphy said he sees artificial intelligence as the potential catalyst for a coming realignment. On gun reform, the Uvalde school shooting was the impetus for legislation that he ultimately championed in 2022. Now, job displacement and the “outsourcing” of human functions by AI might be a similar push needed to prompt change, Murphy predicts.

“There could be a breaking point that happens on AI, and I think it may be the thing that causes either the right or the left — more likely the left — to really confront the way in which our culture has been corroded and make some pretty drastic changes,” Murphy said in an interview.

“That’s why the book is a specific challenge to the left to do more to capture this realignment,” he said. “I’m writing a book at this moment where it’s not clear if our politics can meet the crisis that I outline.”

The book comes at a critical time in politics, months out from the midterm elections that decide control of Congress and an already much hyped, but so far nonexistent, bench of Democrats that may have an interest in running for president in 2028. Murphy is frequently mentioned as a potential contender for higher office.

While he’s been mum on his ambitions, he’s nevertheless taken many of the steps that historically telegraph an interest in presidential politics or some other higher office. He’s a prolific fundraiser, even when his own name isn’t on the ballot, and last year, he established his own political action committee, the American Mobilization Project.

He’s traveled the country to help with campaigns and to elevate issues. And he’s rolling out endorsements in contested Democratic primaries that could define the party.

The rise in his profile hasn’t come without sharp criticism from Republicans inside and outside of Washington. Murphy has tangled with the White House and the president himself, who has criticized the senator on the platform Truth Social. And more people take notice when he’s not in Connecticut, most recently when he opted to attend a No Kings rally in Los Angeles and snapped a photo with late night TV host Jimmy Kimmel.

And now he’s penned a second book, which will likely reignite speculation. But unlike some of his fellow Democrats, like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Murphy’s aren’t memoirs and don’t contain headline-grabbing or flashy stories. They instead take a more historical and sociological deep-dive into the issues that animate his policy agenda in that moment of time.

Murphy is quick to make that distinction: neither of his two books focuses heavily on his biography, and they don’t make Trump the central focus. Whether he’s interested in running in 2028 remains an open question but one he says he spends little time thinking about.

“I’m not a household name across the country, and so if I was thinking about running for office, I probably would write a book that talks about me and introduces me to people, but I didn’t do that,” Murphy told CT Mirror. “I wrote a book that looks very different than any of the other political books from my colleagues that are out this year.”

“I’m not talking about issues that divide Democrats and Republicans, which would probably be the thing you do if you were running in a Democratic primary,” he added. “I don’t know what my future is, but I just think I’d be foolish to be spending a lot of time thinking about it when there’s no guarantee there’s going to be an election in 2028.”

In his 2020 debut book, “The Violence Inside Us: A Brief History of an Ongoing American Tragedy,” he recalls his obscurity in national politics before his election to the Senate just a month before the Sandy Hook school shooting that led to his political coming-of-age. He didn’t see legislative success on the issue of guns until two years after publication.

But his sophomore book comes at a markedly different point in American politics and his career, in which he grew into a burgeoning negotiator and dealmaker and later evolved again into an outspoken Trump critic who hasn’t been shy to call out his own party since the disastrous 2024 elections — and still does, both in interviews and in the book. He’s become savvier at conveying this through social media, which has brought him moments of both virality and controversy.

Murphy recounted one of those moments from 2023 when he urged progressives to not be dismissive of Oliver Anthony’s overnight hit song, “Rich Men North of Richmond.” Anthony’s persona and the senator’s posts hit a political nerve. He sang about working-class issues — low wages, long hours and high taxes — but he also dabbled in conspiracy theories and mused about stereotypes around welfare programs.

The song is just one example Murphy uses to get at this larger thesis.

Murphy has spent the last several years talking about the issue of loneliness, which he said was exacerbated by the pandemic and fueled by social media. In the Biden administration, then-U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared loneliness a public health epidemic in 2023, equating the risks of disconnection to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.

Murphy’s foray into the issue brought on skepticism at the time, something he openly acknowledged in past interviews. In the book, he recalled being met with “ridicule.” It made him briefly question whether he waded into unwelcome territory for a politician. He feels that has changed slightly since he first took it up.

“I think there’s a lot more space for these conversations around the emotional health of the country than there was five years ago when I started thinking about all of this, but it is still true that the day-to-day political stories dominate our attention economy and dominate most days for political figures,” he said.

While the book is not a memoir, Murphy weaved in stories from his upbringing in Wethersfield and how the small-town neighborly feel provided him a sense of connection at a young age. He lamented over the loss of mom-and-pop type shops that colored his childhood, making way for the major chains that tore at the fabric of a town with a storied history.

Now, he’s hoping many of the topics in his book can translate into legislative action, some of which he has already introduced over the past few years. He concludes with a list of 30 proposals that he believes can achieve his vision of the “common good” — or, taken a different way, can read like a campaign platform.

They run the gamut of seeking to address the six pillars in his book: a minimum wage of $30 an hour, a ban on non-compete agreements, tariff policies coupled with domestic incentives, a social media ban for children under 13, local zoning changes for intergenerational living, a six-month requirement for young Americans to commit to national service and a constitutional amendment to regulate money in politics.

But he writes that what he learned over the past several years must go beyond politics, his job in Congress and even the defeat of Trump. For the senator, “it must be spiritual.”

“I try to challenge people to think about the entire idea of happiness. It’s not really a job or a salary. It’s your relationship, it’s your connections, it’s your sense that you are rooted to a particular place and a set of people,” Murphy said. “And I think government has just missed the mark for the last 30 years.”