The Democratic National Committee is refusing to release its autopsy of the party’s major 2024 losses it announced on Wednesday, breaking Chair Ken Martin’s public pledge to do so. The decision underscores the party’s challenges in grappling with its electoral setbacks as it heads into what is expected to be a stronger midterm year.
The DNC’s completed post-election review of the party’s melodramatic and botched campaign cycle is based on hundreds of interviews with operatives in all 50 states. During that process, some Democrats raised concerns about releasing the findings, according to a DNC official granted anonymity to describe the sensitive process.
The DNC wanted to avoid another public debate over how the party lost the White House to Donald Trump, and instead, turn its focus on its recent successes, according to this official. Democrats have overperformed in special elections across the country this year, and won handily in New Jersey and Virginia last month. The committee previewed some initial findings from the autopsy to top donors and other Democratic stakeholders in October.
Former President Joe Biden’s decision to run for reelection, despite his advanced age — and his disastrous debate performance — were not mentioned in the some excerpts of the report’s findings, which were shared with POLITICO. Democrats are still divided over what contributed to Kamala Harris’ loss.
In a statement, Martin said the committee had “completed a comprehensive review of what happened in 2024” and they are “putting our learnings into motion,” noting the party’s off-year victories.
“In our conversations with stakeholders from across the Democratic ecosystem, we are aligned on what’s important, and that’s learning from the past and winning the future,” Martin continued. “Here’s our North Star: does this help us win? If the answer is no, it’s a distraction from the core mission.”
The decision marks an about-face for a coalition that’s at odds over what went wrong last year, and still registering record-low approval ratings even among its own voters. Several outside groups, from the progressive Way to Win to the center-left Welcome nonprofit, released their own in-depth audits of the party’s missteps with differing diagnoses for how to fix its problems. Just last week, some DNC members called on the committee to provide more answers.
The DNC official described some examples of the report’s findings, including the party’s organizing strategies, necessary technological upgrades and its youth voter problem — though the details shared with POLITICO were sparse and incomplete. Excerpts from the review broadly described Democrats as defensive on immigration and public safety — issues that generally favor Republicans — but didn’t name-check a campaign, candidate or entity for its role in this posture, at least not publicly.
On the party’s organizing efforts, the DNC’s review urged campaigns to incentivize engaging conversations with voters over just the number of doors knocked and phones called. It called for investing more into relational organizing and year-round field infrastructure, efforts Martin championed during his chair’s race last year. Of the party’s data infrastructure, the DNC’s report issued warnings that it was out-of-date and overwhelmed at key moments during the campaign and called for it to be modernized.
It described the party’s much-reported losses among young voters, citing Republicans’ advantages in communicating through the influencer ecosystem and pressing Democrats to do engage with non-traditional media sources. Back in February, Democrats conceded the GOP was “running circles” around them online, but in describing its findings, the DNC doesn’t go much further in clarifying its own public recommendations.
This fall, the DNC held briefings with donors and other Democratic stakeholders on its initial findings. At the time, one Democrat who attended an October donor event confirmed that Biden’s initial decision to run in spite of his advanced age was not mentioned by DNC officials as a part of the review. It’s not clear whether his decision to run for reelection is discussed in the private review.
Biden’s age was not mentioned in the excerpts of the review shared with POLITICO on Thursday, nor was it raised in other briefings on the report’s initial findings. Most Democrats cite the last-minute candidate switch as a core reason for the party’s sweeping losses.
Martin’s decision to withhold the report doubles back on a pledge he made just hours after he was elected to be the DNC’s chair in February. In comments to reporters, Martin committed to the public release of the 2024 report.
At the time, he also questioned why the DNC hadn’t released its 2016 autopsy, when he questioned, “what happened with that … was there any utility in doing that?”
“Of course it will be released,” Martin said in February, referring to a future review on the 2024 election. “There has to be some lessons that we glean on that so we can operationalize it, not just here in DC, but through all of the 57 state parties, and, of course, the county parties, so people have a sense of what we need to do.”
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