President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House ahead President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration in 2025. Photo / Getty Images
In the United States, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has released a long-awaited autopsy of the party’s failed 2024 presidential campaign, but party leaders took the awkward position of asserting that the report itself “does not meet our standards”.
The report was released “for full transparency”, according to DNC chair Ken Martin, who has faced months of anger over his earlier decision to withhold it.
But the document, described by party officials as a draft, opened with the DNC disavowing its contents and stating it “cannot independently verify the claims presented”.
The report, which was prepared by Democratic strategist Paul Rivera, argued that the White House, under President Joe Biden, did not do enough to set Harris up for political success.
It said the White House told the DNC to do polling ahead of the 2022 midterms to assess how then-first lady Jill Biden could support her husband – but no such polling was done to support Harris as vice president.
The autopsy also said Democrats did not attack Trump forcefully enough, suggesting many in the party believed Trump’s negatives were so “baked in” that negative advertising would be of limited use.
Future Forward, a super PAC supporting Harris, focused on making an economic case for Harris because the issue was the top concern for voters, the report said, but Harris still “lost the economic argument”.
The committee’s initial decision to withhold the report was driven by Martin’s desire to avoid reigniting the finger-pointing that consumed the party after the 2024 loss. Democrats have been notching a string of wins at the ballot box since then.
But holding back the report caused consternation within the Democratic establishment, prompting some to question Martin’s leadership. And the messy process of drafting and releasing the document has been embarrassing as the party tries to turn the page on 2024 and move on to winning races later this year.
The report also delved into decision-making during the 2024 presidential race. During Harris’s campaign, the report said, pollsters recognised that Donald Trump’s ads attacking her stance on transgender issues were “very effective” and concluded that if “the Vice President would not change her position – and she did not – then there was nothing which would have worked as a response”.
Martin defended the decision to keep the report private last year in a statement to The Washington Post, saying. “Here’s our North Star: does this help us win? If the answer is no, it’s a distraction from the core mission.”
CNN was the first to obtain the 2024 autopsy. The draft leaft out some notable sources of friction for Democrats in 2024 – including criticism from the party’s left over the Biden administration’s strong support for Israel in its war with Hamas.
The autopsy lamented that, in the years since Barack Obama’s landslide presidential victory in 2008, Democrats had “lost ground at every level of government” and missed opportunities to invest in states and local officials.
The report called for greater focus on voters in “Middle America” and the South, who it says had “come to believe they are not included in the Democratic vision”.
It claimed Harris “wrote off rural America, assuming urban/suburban margins would compensate”.
The autopsy said the Democratic Party and its candidates had lost voters’ trust, and it echoed other warnings from top Democrats about population shifts away from blue states.
The main problem with the report, according to the DNC, was that many interviews and analysis were not supplied to support claims made in the report – making verification difficult.
The release comes at a trying time for the DNC. Despite wins at the ballot box, the committee holds US$18 million in debt, according to its most recent fundraising report, with only US$14 million in the bank.
Alyssa Cass, a Democratic operative in New York, quipped: “I hope we can find the money for an autopsy of the rollout of the autopsy.”
- The Washington Post