The Democratic National Committee’s 2024 autopsy, which is a report on why the Democrats lost, was released after significant pressure to do so — and it’s left Democrats and critics shocked by its failure to grapple with some of the biggest shortcomings of the 2024 presidential campaign.
The release of the long-awaited report on the party’s 2024 collapse is already being panned and not only for its strange factual errors, lack of citations for its sources and completely missing sections. The autopsy, which was initially released by CNN and authored by Democratic Strategist Paul Rivera, fails to draw the connection between the party’s loss in 2024 and its platform.
It also fails to mention key issues in the campaign, such as foreign policy, and sparse references to other key issues like healthcare, housing and affordability. President Donald Trump, in his 2024 campaign, was able to outflank former Vice President Kamala Harris on some of these issues by running as the anti-war candidate and pushing policies like no taxes on tips. He was also boosted by an assassination attempt or two. While the autopsy does discuss the failures of former President Joe Biden’s “Bidenomics” messaging, it fails to identify material changes to the party’s platform that could simultaneously serve as salves for the party’s messaging ahead of future elections.
Corbin Trent, a former National Campaign Coordinator for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., told Salon that he sees the problem with the Democrats’ economic message being that they failed to offer up transformative policies, and instead fell back on an insistence that Biden’s economic policies represented a maximalist vision of the Democratic Party’s stance on the economy. Despite this, Trent explained, “Nothing materialized in a tangible way for people.”
“They were being told ‘Not only did you elect the right guy, but he’s in there doing the most transformational version of our vision for America, that could be done,’ and it didn’t fundamentally help people in their day-to-day life, so they rejected it wholeheartedly,” Trent said. “And I think that that’s still happening now.”
For example, the autopsy identifies areas of economic pain, but doesn’t suggest how Democrats might address these issues policy-wise. Rather, its criticisms appear to be largely having to do with the failure of Democrats to deliver their message — leaving the question of how appealing their message was in the first place mostly unaddressed.
“Millions of Americans are suffering from poor access to healthcare, manufacturing and job losses, and a failing infrastructure, yet continue to be persuaded to vote against their best interests because they do not see themselves reflected in the America of the Democratic Party,” the autopsy reads.
“I don’t think people have voted for Democrats in a long time. They voted against Republicans.”
The sloppiness of the autopsy and its unfinished state are also notable. The report lacks citations for many of its claims and also contains basic factual errors. For example, it says that former Speaker of the House John Boehner resigned in 2014, when he actually resigned in 2015. The autopsy also does not include what is arguably the most important part: its conclusion. In the version released, the DNC itself has made many annotations, marking points where the autopsy does not cite its sources, makes false statements and is incomplete.
Trent said that in his view, the Democratic Party has continued to fail to offer a real transformational vision for the country and that, while the midterms are looking favorable for Democrats right now, they seem to be winning only because of just how unpopular Trump, MAGA and the Republicans have become thanks to the Iran war, economic stagnation and an immigration crackdown that has killed U.S. citizens.
“I think that’s still happening now. You know, I don’t think people have voted for Democrats in a long time. They voted against Republicans. I think the last Democrat people voted for on a national scale was probably Obama in ‘08,” Trent said. “It says here, you know, that they weren’t hard enough on Trump, right? Well, hard enough on Trump about what? What they didn’t do is go against his world vision — his big vision for where America’s going — and then put up an alternative vision.”
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Centrist groups in the Democratic Party have already moved to claim that the autopsy vindicates their prescription that the party needs to move toward the middle, though they haven’t pointed to specific parts of the report that support that reading.
“The autopsy draft released today validates the case we’ve been making post-2024 and are making again today as we gather over 150 Nevada Democrats to chart the party’s future,” Third Way president Jon Cowan said in a statement. “Democrats must be able to win the middle, anytime, anywhere and they can do that only with a combative centrism that rejects identity politics, reclaims the vital center, and positions the party as fighters on the economic issues that matter most to voters. As the NY Times poll shows, even a majority of Democrats want the party to move center not left, and this report echoes that sentiment. For Democrats who want to win, this report should be case closed.”
Trent said that in his view, what the Democrats need is leadership that is willing to put forward a new vision for the United States and to enforce discipline within the party in terms of supporting that vision. He pointed to the example of former President Franklin Roosevelt, who famously supported primary challengers against anti-New Deal Democrats in the 1938 elections as a way of changing the direction of the party.
Tory Gavito, the president of Way to Win, a progressive donor network and research organization, told Salon that she sees the autopsy as basically agnostic on what, if anything, the Democrats should stand for.
“It does appear to me that the focus of the autopsy is more tactical than it is substantive in terms of what voters were talking about, and what voters wanted,” Gavito said. “It seems to be focused on what systems need to be put in place, that’s easy. Aligning a party behind some big political ideas, policy ideas, that’s harder and that’s where we need to go.”
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Gavito also addressed the autopsy’s failure to reckon with the role that American foreign policy, and particularly the U.S. government’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza played in the election. The war in Gaza has been considered a genocide by many of the world’s leading human rights organizations and scholars, including Israeli organizations, with many making this distinction well ahead of the 2024 election. These determinations are based on the internationally accepted definition of genocide, which “requires that a perpetrator kill, seriously harm, or inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of a group, in whole or in part, with the intent to destroy the group as such.”
The Biden administration, however, maintained stalwart support for Israel and Harris indicated that there would be no difference between Biden and her policy toward supporting Israel’s actions if she were elected as president.
While it’s impossible to say whether the war in Gaza cost Democrats the 2024 election, polling data has shown that the issue played a significant role in depressing Democratic turnout and that it was a top issue for voters who supported Biden in 2020 but not Harris in 2024.
A survey from the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project found that 29% of these voters cited “ending Israel’s violence in Gaza” as a reason for their not supporting Harris, followed by “the economy” at 24%.
Gavito said that while “foreign policy issues may not have been the single factor, there is a tendency for a party to win when the movements align.” Gavito pointed to 2020, when the popular support Black Lives Matter movement largely aligned behind the Biden campaign as an example of when standing with a movement can help a campaign. In contrast, in 2024, the Palestine peace movement did not align with Harris’ campaign, which in turn hurt her candidacy.
Gavito concluded that, in her view, the autopsy serves as little more than a diversion at this point in the election cycle.
“I think it’s a distraction. Democrats have the fight of their lives in the next few months to win in 2026 and one of the last opportunities to put a check on a grifter in the White House. The economy is in a total free fall. The Constitution is in shreds. We’re going back to post-Reconstruction era Black representation after Callais,” Gavito said, referring to the recent Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act. “We didn’t wait for an autopsy, we didn’t wait for a signal from the party, we were focused since election day on voters directly about why they voted for Biden in 2020 and then skipped the election in 2024.”
Gavito said that, based on interviews with these voters, they want a clear economic platform from Democrats, but also noted that Democrats have their work cut out for them in convincing voters to trust them on the economy.
“When you talk to voters directly to play you, it’s because Democrats don’t fight for them, and we understand from polling since then too that we continue to have a trust deficit, Democrats continue to have a trust deficit on the economy,” Gavito said.
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