Democrats bury 2024 autopsy report, angering some in the party

Democrats are starting the new year on top.

A string of victories in 2025 in both red and blue states marked a striking improvement over the party’s performance in 2024. To use the political term, this overperformance means that candidates (including losers) received a much higher percentage of the vote than presidential candidate Kamala Harris managed.

This is a strong signal ahead of the midterm elections; It shows that Democratic partisans are mobilizing, a key ingredient to a successful campaign, and that the party is gaining support among independents and perhaps even a few disaffected Republicans.

If history is a guide and the volatile economy is a sign, Democrats will likely take control of the House of Representatives in November and pick up the at least three seats needed to wipe out the GOP’s bare majority. Given the Republican tilt of the contested states, the Senate appears to be a long way off—though not impossible.

In short, Democrats are doing much better than all the black pancakes and existential ideas put forward a year ago.

Yes, the party suffered a heartbreaking defeat in the presidential race. But 2024 was never the disaster some claimed. Democrats acquired He won two seats in the House of Representatives and held his own in most contests except for the Senate battle, where several Republican states reshaped and unseated the few remaining Democratic rivals in the chamber.

Yet, because Democrats are Democrats, there is no happiness and light in the party of Jefferson, Jackson, Clinton and Obama.

Ken Martin, who campaigned to become the party’s chairman last winter, has promised to conduct a comprehensive review of the 2024 elections and make his findings public as a step toward correcting Democrats’ mistakes and bolstering the party going forward.

“What we need to do now is really start to understand what’s going on,” he told reporters before the election.

Now Martin decided to keep that autopsy report.

“Here is our North Star: Will this help us win?” He said in a statement in mid-December that he announced his return and the unceremonious burial of the work. “If the answer is no, that’s a distraction from the core mission.”

There is certainly no shortage of 2024 election analyzes that need to be asked. The sifting through rubble, pointing fingers and accusations began in the blink of an eye after Donald Trump was declared the winner.

There are prescriptions coming from the moderate and progressive wings of the party; Naturally, he suggests, Democrats need to move firmly in their direction to have a chance of winning again. There is a hodgepodge of diagnoses of declared and undeclared 2028 presidential candidates who present themselves as both prophets and saviors of the Democrats.

However, the report Martin commissioned was meant to be the party’s definitive voice, offering both a clear look back and a clear statement going forward.

“We know we were losing ground with Latino voters,” he said in his search days before becoming party chairman. “We know we’re losing ground with women, young voters and, of course, working-class voters. We don’t know how and why that happened yet.”

More than 300 Democrats in each of the 50 states were interviewed as part of the investigation. But even before Martin took out the shovel and started digging, there were good reasons to doubt the accuracy of the report.

According to the New York Times and others, there was no plan to examine President Biden’s dogged decision to seek reelection despite his advanced age, and there was no intention to second-guess any of the strategic decisions Harris made in her hasty campaign.

It’s like trying to solve a murder by ignoring the weapon used and omitting the cause of death.

I’m really curious.

Still, there was predictable outrage when Martin broke his promise.

“This is a very bad decision that reeks of the caution and indifference that brought us to this moment,” Obama White House alumnus Dan Pfeiffer said on social media.

Jamal Simmons, Harris’ former vice presidential adviser, told the Hill newspaper: “People who volunteer, donate and vote deserve to know what went wrong.” “The DNC should tell them.”

In 2013, Republicans commissioned a similar after-action evaluation after Mitt Romney’s loss to President Obama. He was very hurtful with his blunt comments.

A complacent, reckless and ideologically rigid party has turned away voters with stale policies that have changed little over decades and unhelpfully projects an image that alienates minorities and young voters, the 98-page report said.

Among its recommendations, the autopsy called for the party to develop a “more palatable brand of conservatism” and offered a comprehensive set of “engagement” recommendations for minority groups, including Latinos, Asians and African Americans. (DEI, anyone?)

“Unless changes are made, it will become increasingly difficult for Republicans to win another presidential election in the near future,” the report concluded.

Trump, of course, won the White House three years later without doing anything the report suggested.

This suggests that the Democrats’ autopsy, buried or not, won’t matter much when voters go to the polls. (That’s affordable, stupid.)

However, Martin should not have published the review simply because of the time and effort involved. Democrats already had animosity toward the president, especially among donors unhappy with his leadership and performance, and burying the autopsy report won’t help.

Martin has made his promise, and breaking that promise would be an unnecessary distraction and a disgrace to the party.

Also, a little thoughtful self-assessment is never a bad thing. It’s hard to look forward when you have your head stuck in the sand.