In politics, there are three fundamental elements for success beyond the quality of a given candidate: strategy, tactics, and policies. The first two elements are designed for a party and its candidates to market their vision of the future. But tactical and strategic considerations come up empty if they are not linked to issues and policies popular with the voters. And that is the fundamental problem with the Democrats’ just-released, widely panned so-called autopsy of their crash and burn in 2024.
The Democrats’ report about an election that cost them every bit of power was compiled by an independent agency in early 2025, though it has all the earmarks of influence from party officials in denial about the ultimate reasons for their defeat. The autopsy was immediately embargoed, leading to widespread speculation that it was just too embarrassing to release to the public. And now that it’s finally been released more than a year later, it is easy to understand why.
Whistling Past the Graveyard
The report could have honestly addressed the array of Biden-era woke policies that have universally been blamed for the Democrats’ shellacking. It could have addressed the glaring deficiencies of Joe Biden and their eventual presidential replacement candidate, Kamala Harris. And it could have been released in a timely fashion to put their nightmare election in the rearview mirror and reassure voters that they have learned their lessons. It could have at least paid lip service to the notion of tacking toward the center going forward.
But the report accomplishes none of that and, in fact, makes things worse. If anything, it makes the party look dazed and confused. It has already been widely panned for its misspellings and other slop that somehow were not cleaned up over the last year. Ken Martin, the embattled head of the Democratic National Committee, who has seemed in over his head from the start, somehow chose to remove the embargo on the autopsy six months before Election Day. This raises an all-too-obvious question: Why in the world would Martin and the DNC choose this moment to remind voters of their stinging rebuke the last time around?
Martin’s explanation is making leftists’ heads explode: “For full transparency, I am releasing the report as we received it, in its entirety, unedited and unabridged,” the chair wrote. “It 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.”
Unbelievable. Somehow it is a bright idea to release a sloppy, rambling, unedited report that does little more than restate what all of us long since learned, and that is unsatisfactory even to the man responsible for its publication. The “full transparency” touted by Martin only reveals the soft underbelly of incompetence surrounding the party just as it seeks to rebuild its tattered brand.
Autopsy of the Autopsy
On left-wing MS NOW, Michael Steele, former Republican Party chair and sworn enemy of Donald Trump, drove home the point about timing: “This is a report that should have been released at the time because … nothing in that report has changed from the day it was first released to today. So if you’ve changed nothing, if you have not cleaned it up, if you’ve not made it better, if you’ve not answered the constituent questions within the DNC, why are you doing this today?” And then Steele delivered the punchline that effectively sums up the Democrats’ ineptitude: “I don’t understand why y’all can’t get out of your own way.”
David Hogg, a young left-wing activist who resigned from the DNC after clashing with Martin, reacted with fury: “This autopsy, and the months-long debate about even releasing the report, is a demoralizing joke,” Hogg said in a statement. “Ken Martin should resign, and the DNC should select a new leader who demonstrates competence, creativity, moral clarity, and a relentless commitment to actually changing the broken Democratic Party brand.”
Indeed, the decision to release this report in the run-up to a federal election is being so widely assailed as political malpractice that it has drowned out discussion of the contents. The autopsy largely repackages the voluminous data and commentary about the 2024 election, pointing to the party’s loss of support among men and rural voters, placing too much stock in attacking Trump, and taking young, black, and Hispanic voters for granted. It criticizes Biden’s advisors for failing to prepare VP Harris, even as they remained in full denial about Biden’s transparent decline. And it points to a failure to sufficiently fund state parties.
That’s all well and good, but what was left out of the autopsy is more revealing. There is no reference to Biden’s evident infirmities and nothing about the “nomination process,” selecting rather than electing Kamala Harris. And perhaps most importantly, there is no acknowledgment that their policies on the wrong side of 80-20 issues, such as the genital mutilation of minors, boys in girls' sports, and taxpayer-funded sex change operations for prisoners, were crucial to their rejection by the voters. There is little for Democrats to embrace in what was supposed to be an honest and open exercise of introspection. On top of revealing the incompetence of their national operation, they have produced an autopsy that has infuriated their partisans while sidestepping the cause of death.
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