Republicans keep getting crazier; meanwhile, Democrats keep getting more Democrat. In other words, what Trump does to Iran policy, the Democrats do to themselves. Having blown the 2024 election, the party commissioned a report on why. Ken Martin, the party’s chairman, now disavows the autopsy that he called for. But the statement in which he does this offers pretty much the same list of recommendations as the report. I see one difference. The autopsy talks about winning more minority voters, especially young men, but doing so while retreating from identity politics and “80-20 issues.” Martin’s statement doesn’t mention any of that. Otherwise, the two lists match well, a coincidence that Martin doesn’t acknowledge. Instead, he says the report “wasn’t ready for prime time” and needed killing. Politico’s reaction article contains no quotes claiming a matchup. Sentiments go in quite a different direction. “The report’s so stupid, it’s hard to make sense why something’s in there and why it’s not,” opines a “senior Democratic operative.”
True, Gaza gets left out and so does inflation, and Biden’s decline is barely present. In fact the report spends just 10 or so pages recapping and analyzing the events of ’24. We’re told the Dems should’ve hit Trump much harder, and Kamala Harris campaign’s faulted for counting on cities and suburbs to offset losses in the countryside. Harris herself is faulted as a candidate because in North Carolina she ran far behind the party’s nominee for governor. On the other hand, she’s also praised as a candidate (“Any fair critic of the Vice President has to acknowledge the strength and ability she demonstrated as the nominee”), and the White House gets knocked for not backing her with some polling during her years as vice president. They polled how Jill Biden could go over with the public, we’re told, but no polling for Harris, not even when her border duties attracted conservative fire. But the report has much more to say about what operatives and consultants have been up to. The focus is what the Democratic National Committee has been doing regarding infrastructure, fundraising, and strategy.
The report finds the Dems are strong on fundraising and data management, weak on messaging, coordination, and voter engagement; there’s an overload of texts asking for money and a shortage of face-to-face encounters that win over votes. The party waits until elections to make its case to the public; not only that, it waits until late in the elections; meanwhile, right-wing media talks year-in, year-out to millions of voters. The Democrats outspend the Republicans, a situation the report spins as donors’ small-dollar contributions getting piped to “networks, stations, platforms, and newspapers owned by Republicans or right-wing entities.” Worse, lack of decent targeting means the money doesn’t buy attention from voters who can be persuaded. Judging from what the report says, nobody seems to be buying the Democrats’ act. When Joe Biden’s reelection effort had to staff up, “there was little volunteer or activist interest.” And we’re told that voters, while supporting Democratic views, don’t support Democrats because the impression has got around that they’re bumbling and disunited.
In that connection here’s Chairman Martin: “In short, 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.” As Martin tells things, the party commissioned somebody to examine what the Democrats did wrong in 2024, and the person it chose proved unable to do decent work. This person, who refused to provide any data for checking his findings, delivered an unfinished botch that Martin decided to deep-six. Better to look to the party’s recent successes, he figured. Then he changed his mind because, after all, “transparency is paramount” and “we have to learn from the past to win the future.” Politico, discussing the period of Martin’s decision, adds: “pressure continued to build on the DNC to release [the autopsy], with liberal groups like RootsAction flooding DNC officers with thousands of emails, as activists and allies traded conspiracy theories about what could be in the report that the organization didn’t want publicly aired.”
The report’s author, Paul Rivera, can’t be reached but definitely doesn’t work for the DNC anymore. The released text has a red-ink 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.” Further, the committee has stuck in notes to show up factual errors and faulty sources; by my count there are 244 of these notes on the report’s 190 pages of text. Each note’s in red, with a sharp little box and a slanting line from the box to the alleged error or, more often, unsourced claim. Page by page the effect is punishing. Seventeen of the notes say that an entire section’s missing any sources to back it up. A half dozen others say that one section or another simply isn’t there: appendices, sources, executive summary, and more.
But look at what’s left. I’ll lift from Martin’s statement the descriptions of his beliefs, beliefs that are also stated in the report: “We can’t just be anti-Trump, we must have an affirmative agenda to sell… We can’t stop campaigning at the end of an election cycle, we have to always be ‘on.’… Campaign ads are not a substitute for the deep relationship building we need… We can no longer take our voters for granted… keep our eyes trained on the long-game… building infrastructure and restoring credibility with communities… every race all across the country… commit to partisan voter registration … retain and train top talent… speak authentically to voters in a way that recognizes that audiences consume content differently across communities… better coordinate with one another…” Somehow the chairman of the DNC’s reviling a report while agreeing with it.
There was one more shared belief: “The Democratic brand is in trouble.” Why is that? See the report.