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.
The incomplete report doesn’t mention a number of key issues that continue to dog the Democratic Party, including the issue of the war in Gaza. In 192 pages, it sparsely touches on former President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out.
It also appears to lack any formal conclusions about what went wrong.
Both the report and the process drew immediate, scathing criticism from prominent Democrats.
“We should take this autopsy with a massive grain of salt. Clearly, the people who put it together ran a highly ineffective, ill-researched process. Therefore it’s difficult to draw constructive conclusions,” said Adrienne Elrod, a senior adviser on the Biden and then Harris campaigns. “I’m glad Ken released this with annotations. Time to put this chapter behind us and move on and focus on winning the midterms.”
“What’s important is what’s missing, what they’re not releasing,” said Ashley Etienne, a former communications director for Vice President Kamala Harris who left the administration in 2021.
“It feels like what the DNC is doing is cherry-picking the parts of it that it wants to actually release, that [are] less problematic for the party going forward, because most of the stuff that we’re reading right now is … not groundbreaking.”
In a statement Thursday, DNC Chair Ken 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 report’s abrupt release and its incomplete nature have upped scrutiny on the already-embattled Martin, who has been facing a crisis of confidence from within as the party struggles financially. One Democratic operative who worked for the DNC and the Harris campaign called it a “self-inflicted wound and unfortunate given victories in New Jersey and Virginia.” Others suggested it could raise further questions about his ability to continue on as chair.
“The report’s so stupid, it’s hard to make sense why something’s in there and why it’s not,” another senior Democratic operative close to the process who was granted anonymity to speak candidly told POLITICO in an interview.
Martin pledgedto release the postmortem publicly in January 2025, then reversed course in December. The move infuriated Democrats at war with themselves over what went wrong in the election even as Martin said he was attempting to steer the party toward focusing on a series of post-2024 overperformances rather than continuing to publicly rehash its botched presidential effort.
But pressure continued to build on the party to release it, 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 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.”
The DNC never received a finished report, according to a person within the party granted anonymity to share details, and the author did not turn over a list of interviewees or transcripts despite multiple requests. The report appears disordered, with factual errors and typos.
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.