The Democratic National Committee finally released its 2024 election autopsy this week, but not before its own chair publicly disowned it. Ken Martin announced he did not endorse the document, admitting that when he received it late last year, it simply "wasn't ready for primetime. Not even close."
The rollout became so tortured that former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau mocked the entire process, listing eight stages: promise to release; appoint incompetent person; they produce incoherent product; announce you won't release it; lie about why; gaslight critics; face internal revolt; finally release it.
The document now exists in a bizarre limbo. A red disclaimer on every page states that it reflects only the author's views, not the DNC's, and the party "cannot independently verify the claims presented." Throughout the nearly 50,000-word report, the DNC inserted red-boxed objections to the text, essentially marking up the document like a teacher grading a student paper. One annotation reads: "No sourcing provided for several claims in this section."
Major outlets have hammered the work. The New York Times reported it is "disorganized and leaves empty entire sections," while "often veering into political clichés and hard-to-follow explanations." CNN found it "contains lots of errors and curious inclusions, even some that are puzzling to have in a draft."
But the harshest criticism from progressive critics focuses on what the autopsy avoids. The document sidesteps two pivotal political decisions: how Joe Biden ran for re-election until it was demonstrably too late, and how Kamala Harris became the party's nominee without a voting process involving Democratic voters.
Gaza gets no mention
Most glaring is the autopsy's total silence on Gaza. In nearly 50,000 words, the document contains zero mentions of "Gaza," "Palestinians," "Israel," or "genocide." Yet insiders report that Paul Rivera, the consultant who wrote the autopsy, privately acknowledged to Democratic officials that Harris's position on Gaza damaged her electoral prospects.
Margaret DeReus, executive director of the Institute for Middle East Understanding, stated Thursday that "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."
An August 2024 poll by IMEU and YouGov of three swing states found that for every voter Harris might lose by supporting an arms embargo on Israel, she stood to gain five votes. This data never made it into the autopsy.
Current polling shows 75 percent of Democrats believe Israel is committing genocide, and 80 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents hold an unfavorable view of Israel, according to Pew Research. Yet DNC chair Martin has continued to claim the party is "divided" on the issue. When Gallup showed just 8 percent of Democrats approved of Israel's military actions in Gaza last summer, Martin spoke of internal disagreement among the party faithful.
The gap is not between Democrats, but between party leadership and its base. The autopsy reflects that disconnect rather than addressing it. By excluding hard data on how Harris's support for arming Israel cost her votes, the report mirrors the 2024 campaign's own refusal to grapple with the moral and political case for rejecting Biden's Israel policy.
The autopsy instead focuses heavily on mechanics like ad spending and fundraising while avoiding deeper questions about why millions of voters, especially the young, felt uninspired by the Democratic ticket and refused to turn out.
Author James Rodriguez: "A postmortem that won't honestly confront Gaza is a postmortem that's already dead on arrival."
Comments