An old wound was reopened for Democrats on Thursday when a long-suppressed “autopsy” of their 2024 election loss was finally revealed to the public. Commissioned by the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the report contains ugly truths the party brass preferred to avoid, and they suppressed it for more than a year before it leaked to the press. But as a former Democratic operative myself, I know that looking right at the mess is a first step toward healing.
President Donald Trump shattered Democrats’ expectations by winning the presidency for a second time. Not only did he topple the blue wall, but he became the first Republican to win the popular vote since 2004. He even made massive gains among Democrats’ core constituencies, winning working-class Latino men and chipping away at a portion of black male voters, too.
In a viral essay for The Free Press, I wrote about voting for Trump after spending my entire professional life raising $50 million for Democratic politicians. And there was a brief moment in time when it did seem like they were sincerely searching for answers and seemed truly interested in learning what went wrong.
The autopsy ordered by new DNC chairman Ken Martin was supposed to guide that learning process. But it was a telling sign when months went by and it was never released. Senior officials were busily assigning blame to one another, fighting about whether Joe Biden’s late exit from the race had doomed their chances, or if Kamala Harris’s progressive image put swing voters out of reach. They didn’t want to reckon with the policies and positions that had tainted the entire Democratic brand.
