The Democratic National Committee — after months of both internal and external pressure — released a haphazard version of its autopsy of Kamala Harris’ failed 2024 presidential campaign on Thursday.
The report paints a bleak portrait of the party following the crushing loss to President Donald Trump, who carried every battleground state in his Electoral College romp, even as it fails to address some of the defining issues of the campaign, including Israel and Gaza.
Democrats “have proven incapable of projecting strength, unity, and leadership, and voters have drifted away,” Democratic strategist Paul Rivera, who authored the report but is not mentioned in the published version, writes. The autopsy was first released by CNN and shortly after published by the DNC.
Rivera writes that since President Barack Obama’s historic win in 2008, “Democrats have lost ground at every level of government.”
“These losses are the direct result of missed opportunities to invest in our states, counties, and local parties and candidates,” he writes.
DNC Chair Ken Martin pledgedto release the postmortem publicly in January 2025, then reversed course in December, infuriating Democrats at war with themselves over what went wrong in the election as it attempted to steer the party toward focusing on a series of post-2024 overperformances rather than continue to publicly rehash its botched presidential effort. But pressure continued to build on the party to release it, with activists and allies wondering what could be in the report that the DNC didn’t want publicly aired.
The party reversed course — again — on Thursday, with Martin acknowledging in a Substack post that by trying to avoid creating a distraction after the party’s wins last November, “I created even bigger distraction. For that, I sincerely apologize.”.
In a statement Thursday, Martin said the report “does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards, but I am doing this because people need to be able to trust the Democratic Party and trust our word.”
And in releasing it, the DNC put a bright red disclaimer atop each page: “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.”
The version posted online Thursday notably contains nothing on Israel and Gaza, a polarizing issue within the party that some Democrats feel played a central role in costing them the White House in 2024 and has continued as a flashpoint in this year’s primaries. That is sure to spark renewed angst among activists.
It also appears to lack any formal conclusions about what went wrong.
The post-election analysis contains interviews with hundreds of operatives from all 50 states. During that process, some Democrats raised concerns about releasing the findings, POLITICO previously reported. It hits as voters continue to give Democrats low marks in surveys even as the party is favored to flip at least one chamber of Congress this fall.
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