The nearly 200-page draft of an internal autopsy of the 2024 presidential election released by the Democratic National Committee this week was more notable for the subjects it didn’t tackle than what it did. The document, which was littered with blank pages, factual inaccuracies and bright red disclaimers, omitted some of the hottest-button issues of the race. And it made clear that the party had failed to take advantage of the retrospective exercise to grapple fully with the factors that caused Kamala Harris to lose to Donald J. Trump.
Whether that was by design is unclear. Party leaders distanced themselves from the report as they unveiled it, releasing a statement saying it “does not meet our standards.”
Still, critics were quick to jump.
“It’s just a perfect metaphor for the failures of the national Democratic Party,” said Zach Wahls, a Democratic Senate candidate in Iowa, who said he got a question about the report at an event on Thursday evening. “You can’t even complete a review of why you lost an election, and then you wonder why you keep losing elections.”
Mr. Wahls called for Ken Martin, the party’s embattled chairman, to resign: “It’s time to burn it all down and start over.”
Here are four issues the D.N.C. autopsy ignored:
The war in Gaza
An early news report from Axios, which prompted interest in the autopsy, claimed that the report concluded that Ms. Harris, the former vice president, lost “significant support” from voters in her presidential run because of the Biden administration’s approach to the war in Gaza.
But, in the end, the report made no mention of Israel or Gaza, an issue that has fractured the party. Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. — and then Ms. Harris — were dogged by pro-Palestinian protesters who objected to their support for Israel, including some who encouraged liberal voters to boycott Mr. Biden during the primary.
Ignoring that issue was a major omission, according to numerous Democratic officials and candidates. Survey after survey shows a Democratic base eager to take a more oppositional stance to Israel, with nearly half of all Democrats describing their party as too supportive of Israel.
“It’s obvious to any observer of American politics that Gaza was a huge issue in the 2024 election and to not confront it is exactly what led to the establishment losing,” said Representative Ro Khanna of California, who warned party leaders during the 2024 campaign that their stance would cost them votes. “What the establishment wants is for the issue to go away. But it’s not going away.”
Biden’s age
It’s hard to analyze the 2024 campaign without addressing Mr. Biden’s age and mental acuity. Yet these issues were not mentioned in the draft report.
Amanda Litman, the head of Run for Something, which recruits young progressives to seek office, said Mr. Biden’s age was a “huge” reason behind her party’s defeat, and that has fueled continued mistrust.
“Not to mention it at all as even a factor,” she said, “shows not seriously engaging with reality.”
The former president, who would have been 86 at the end of a second term, was dogged by questions about his mental and physical fitness to serve from the early weeks of his presidency.
There was plenty of evidence that voters saw his age as a significant concern. As early as March 2024, polling showed a majority of voters who supported Mr. Biden in 2020 believed he was too old to lead the country effectively. But the report does not address the factors that led the party to mostly fall behind his decision to run for a second term.
In the end, it was his halting and disjointed performance in the debate that transformed concerns about his age into his final political liability, forcing his departure from the race.
After Biden stepped aside
Once Mr. Biden dropped out of the presidential race, the party quickly coalesced around Ms. Harris. She took control of Mr. Biden’s enormous political operation, formally renamed the “Harris for President” campaign, and got immediate access to his campaign war chest and staff.
The report did not wrestle with whether this was the right approach.
At the time, some party officials had suggested that holding an open convention would have allowed for more vetting and produced a stronger candidate. But Democratic leaders instead leaned into unity.
Economic issues
Throughout the 2024 race, voters consistently rated economic issues and cost of living as a top concern. But Democrats struggled to talk about that issue in a way that resonated. Mr. Biden yoked his campaign to the virtues of “Bidenomics,” an argument that failed to resonate with voters concerned about higher costs.
When Ms. Harris became the nominee, she initially focused on proposals that would have a direct impact on costs. But, in the final weeks, she pivoted to attacking Mr. Trump as a grave risk to the country’s democratic foundations.
None of that recent history — or how the failure to address economic concerns in the contest broadly hurt Ms. Harris’s campaign — is deeply assessed in the report.
Howard Dean, a former chair of the D.N.C. and a 2004 presidential candidate, said the report was a “piece of junk” and was focused on “inside the beltway” questions rather than what he said was the most important issue: the party’s approach to policy in 2024.
The analysis of the shortcomings of Ms. Harris’s campaign was “fine,” Mr. Dean said, but the report failed to grapple with why “people don’t believe the Democrats have their economic interests at heart.”
Going on Rogan
If the refrain of many Democrats after losing the 2016 presidential race was that Hillary Clinton should have gone to Wisconsin, for some after 2024 it was that Ms. Harris should have gone on Rogan.
In the final days of the 2024 race, Mr. Trump appeared on Joe Rogan’s hugely popular podcast and Ms. Harris chose not to — a decision viewed by critics as a reflection of an overly cautious campaign that failed to embrace the growing power of podcasts and influencers.
Mr. Trump was richly rewarded by his appearance. Not only did it haul in tens of millions of views, but Mr. Rogan endorsed Mr. Trump on the eve of the election.
Ms. Harris later said she regretted that she had not gone on. But there was no discussion of the decision, or the Harris campaign’s broader approach to podcasts, anywhere in the draft report.
Lisa Lerer is a national political reporter for The Times, based in New York. She has covered American politics for nearly two decades.
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