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A long-anticipated “autopsy” report from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was released to the public on Thursday, containing multiple errors and omissions on subjects that may have cost Democrats the White House in 2024.
The DNC — which commissioned the report that was authored by Democratic consultant Paul Rivera — sought to distance itself from its own document. The report features multiple “red boxes” throughout, containing notes from the party objecting to the conclusions on why the Democratic Party failed to defeat President Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
“Disclaimer: This document reflects the views of the author, not the DNC,” . “The DNC was not provided with the underlying sourcing, interviews, or supporting data for many of the assertions contained herein and therefore cannot independently verify the claims presented.”
lacks multiple sections one might expect from an autopsy report of this kind, including an executive message at its beginning or a conclusion at its end. The autopsy contains many spelling and data errors, observers also noted.
Throughout the document, the red boxes feature complaints about a lack of sourcing. However, near the end of the report, the document states that there are hyperlinks throughout that serve as those sources, suggesting that it’s possible the original copy included those sources. A bibliography that is accessible from a hyperlink is also mentioned in the report.
The autopsy largely faults Democrats for not campaigning as Republicans do, and says Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign failed to connect with male voters.
:
At times, it seems Democrats are trying to win arguments while Republicans are focused on winning elections. Democrats operate in an ecosystem defined by reason even in cycles when the electorate is defined by rage. This highlights a fundamental and necessary truth – a brutal and efficiently delivered message will frame the choice for voters and help actually win the election.
“The gender gap can be narrowed. Deploy male messengers, address economic concerns, and don’t assume identity politics will hold male voters of color,” the report states.
But the autopsy also has noticeable issues:
- It makes no mention of the decision by the Harris campaign to include right-wing voices, including former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, during the final stretch of the race — a move that, along with other conservative-leaning policy decisions, may have caused some progressive voters to reconsider backing the Democratic candidate;
- It pushes the false narrative that Americans are against a transition to “green” energy programs, or that progressive-backed social issues caused a “distraction” to voters on the Democrats’ economic messaging;
- And, the report makes zero mention of Democratic candidates’ support for funding Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Indeed, the search terms “Palestine,” “Gaza,” or “Israel” never even show up once in the document.
Indeed, in polling after the election, a subset of voters who backed former President Joe Biden in 2020 were asked why they didn’t back Harris in 2024. Three in 10 of those voters, 29 percent, said “ending Israel’s violence in Gaza” was their top issue in that year’s race. That topic even beat out “the economy” as the main issue for voters in that group.
Although he didn’t make specific mention of the issues outlined above, DNC Chair Ken Martin tried to disavow the autopsy, issuing a statement apologizing for its inadequacies.
“I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards,” Martin said in a statement about the autopsy. “I don’t endorse what’s in this report, or what’s left out of it. I could not in good faith put the DNC’s stamp of approval on it.”
After the disastrous outcome for Democrats in the 2024 races, Martin had run for the chair position, and won, on a platform of conducting and releasing an autopsy report regarding what went wrong for the party. He later reneged on that promise, stating that the party wouldn’t, in fact, make the autopsy report public.
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Thursday’s decision to release it after all was a reversal of his reversal — a decision he made in an effort to be transparent, Martin explained.
“I didn’t want to create a distraction. Ironically, in doing so, I ended up creating an even bigger distraction. And for that, I sincerely apologize,” Martin said.
Criticism of the report was widespread among progressive and Democratic circles.
“Martin and the DNC are trying to wash their hands of the report and its contents. In a hasty, almost amateurish markup, the DNC has gone out of its way to poke holes in the legitimacy of the very report it commissioned,” read a message from RootsAction, which had published its own report late last year (in the absence of the promised one from the DNC).
The progressive organization added:
Martin recruited the author to write the report. He presumably provided the author with resources and access to party officials and functionaries. The DNC has a responsibility to turn in a report that truly grapples with the mistakes of the past so that the Democratic Party can learn from those mistakes and emerge stronger in its fight against Trumpism. The DNC has utterly failed in that respect.
Patrick Gaspard, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who formerly served as the organization’s president, claimed Martin wasn’t the sole person responsible for the report’s shortcomings.
“I will say this isn’t the failing of one guy behind the curtain who isn’t really Oz,” Gaspard said.
However, “the need to be transparent and accountable about blowing 2024 was never a Dem leadership priority,” Gaspard also suggested. “And it shows.”
David Hogg, a former DNC co-vice chair and current president of Leaders We Deserve, was more pointed in his criticism of the report. “Ken Martin should resign,” he said in a post on X.
Remarking on the report’s missing information, the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) noted that, earlier this year, members of its organization were given more details about the autopsy’s findings from its author. During those proceedings, IMEU was told the research concluded that Gaza played a major role in why people didn’t back Harris in 2024, describing it as a “net-negative” issue for her.
On Thursday, following the release of the DNC autopsy, IMEU Policy Project Executive Director Margaret DeReus demanded that Martin be more transparent about the effect the issue had on the presidential election outcome.
“Ken Martin should release the information that the author of the autopsy told us clearly and unambiguously, which is that DNC officials’ review of their own data found Biden’s support for Israel to be a net-negative for Democrats in 2024,” DeReus said.
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