Welcome to Hard Talk from the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker.

My guest today is regarded as a rising star of the Democratic Party in the US Senate.

Chris Murphy describes himself as a progressive Democrat from Connecticut.

He sits on the foreign relations, the homeland security and appropriations committees.

But what marks him out as unusual

is his willingness to tell his own party that they need to think bigger and deeper if they're to

convince American voters the Democrats have answers to what he calls America's metaphysical crisis.

Right now, he's campaigning hard for re-election to the Senate in November.

He's also doing what he can to help Vice President Kamala Harris beat Donald Trump. The race for

the White House remains eye-wateringly close. But as Election Day approaches, the Democrats are

wrestling with a fundamental problem. Polls indicate 70% of Americans think the country is on the wrong

track. How can the incumbent vice president convince them that she and the Democrats represent

change rather than business as usual? Well, Senator Chris Murphy joins me now. Welcome to Hard Talk.

Thanks for having me. I'm sure you would

agree momentum is all in the last days of any election campaign. Kamala Harris seemed to have

extraordinary momentum going back to August, less so today. Why? I don't know that I agree that

there's much momentum left in American politics, in part because, you know,

about 90% plus of the public has already made up their mind. You're competing for a very small

number of undecided voters. You're obviously trying to gin up turnout on your side. This has been a

race inside the margin of error for a long time. It still is. This country has been

in a mood to change leadership perpetually for the last 20 years. And that is not good news for an

incumbent vice president. No, I think you're swimming upstream, right? She is both trying to talk about the ways in which she will be different as a president,

...