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Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin finally released his autopsy of Kamala Harris’s failed 2024 presidential bid against Donald Trump on Thursday. Martin released the document under immense pressure from his own party’s base and did so with a disclaimer arguing that the document does not meet his standards.
“For full transparency, I am releasing the report as we received it, in its entirety, unedited and unabridged,” Martin told CNN, which first published the full document. “It does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards, but I am doing this because people need to be able to trust the Democratic Party and trust our word.”
CNN’s Aaron Blake agreed with Martin’s assessment of the document and noted that it’s full of “factual inaccuracies and is sometimes hard to follow, and there isn’t a coherent strategy laid out for the future so much as a series of disparate points of analysis.”
The document also landed with a thud as many in the Democrats’ pundit class continued to deride Martin, even after getting the document they long called for. Pod Save America’s Tommy Vietor reacted to its release, writing, “I’m glad that Ken released this statement and the flawed 2024 autopsy. If he’d done this in the first place and not lied about why it hadn’t been released, things might be different. As it stands, this raises more questions about his judgment, candor and ability to lead the DNC.”
Below are 5 of the top takeaways from the 192-page document:
Republicans Do Better in a Misinformation-Heavy Environment
The document, which is missing an executive summary, pulls no punches in hammering the party’s performance since the Obama era. Democrats have “vacillated between stagnation and retrogression” since Barack Obama’s sweeping 2008 victory, concludes the analysis. “These losses are the direct result of missed opportunities to invest in our states, counties, and local parties and candidates,” the report says, pointing to what it sees as fundamental structural issues on the local level.
The analysis warns that Democratic Party candidates have “lost the trust and confidence of voters” in an increasingly hostile political environment.
“In the face of misinformation and disinformation, our candidates have proven incapable of projecting strength, unity, and leadership, and voters have drifted away. Indeed, many of our critical Democratic wins can be attributed to negative partisanship — where Republicans have nominated deeply flawed candidates,” concluded the report.
Blames Biden and His White House
The autopsy points the finger at former President Joe Biden’s political operation during his term in office, arguing that the Biden White House allowed right-wing media to define Harris with little to no pushback.
“Democrats won the election and President Biden assigned the Vice President a brief including immigration, which was poorly framed by Republicans as the ‘border czar.’ It was not the official title, but it was the one that the media propagated and the White House failed to contradict or correct,” read the report adding:
Prior to the midterm election, the White House directed the DNC to conduct polling to identify how Dr. Biden could support her husband as president. The research explored the settings, the issues, and the messages needed to create an effective framework.
No similar research was conducted to support the Vice President – to identify the issues she should talk about, the ways in which she should talk about them, the audiences with which she could perhaps resonate and support the President’s agenda. There was also no independent research of the Cabinet.
While hammering Biden for allowing Harris to be defined as the “border czar” as illegal immigration became a hot-button issue, the analysis also argues Biden did little using the bully pulpit as president to hurt Trump politically.
“The national campaign did not effectively drive Trump’s negatives, and the White House did not effectively support Vice President Harris over three and half years to improve her standing before the candidate switch,” the report concludes.
How Senate Races Outperformed Harris
The autopsy offered some of its most concrete analysis while digging into the U.S. Senate races where Democrats won statewide, but Harris still lost the state to Trump.
The document praised the strategy in Michigan, where Elissa Slotkin narrowly won her race, and Harris lost. “Elissa Slotkin in Michigan had a strategy political operatives call “losing better.” Instead of just trying to run up the score in Detroit and Ann Arbor, she focused on cutting her losses in Republican areas,” read the report, adding:
She outperformed Harris in 68 of Michigan’s 83 counties. In suburban Oakland County, she won by 12 points while Harris won by 10.5. In GOP-friendly Macomb County, Harris lost by 14 points but Slotkin only lost by 10. Those four points made a difference.
Critically, the Slotkin team worked to minimize losses in working-class communities. She emphasized her support for manufacturing jobs and made explicit commitments about protecting the auto industry. While she still lost some working-class voters, she ran significantly better than Harris among the same demographic
The report also praised Ruben Gallego and Jacky Rosen in Arizona and Nevada, respectively, for winning their states, despite Trump’s “surge with Latino voters.”
“Successful candidates like Gallego and Rosen showed how year-round presence, economic messaging, and addressing cost-of-living concerns resonate more than identity politics. Organizations with significant Latino membership, particularly service sector Labor groups, need to be central partners in this recalibration, as they maintain the year-round infrastructure and community credibility to effectively reach these voters,” read the report.
Pinpoints Harris’s Many Failures
The report also makes clear that Harris did herself no favors and was tied to some issues that turned off voters. The autopsy argues that Harris targeted the wrong voting blocs and was unable to distance herself from attacks on hot-button issues, like trans rights.
“Harris’s focus on college-educated suburbs left gaps [with Democratic North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Josh Stein] at unwinnable levels,” said the report, adding, “Harris lagged in rural areas nationally, which proved to be insurmountable in swing states.”
“Harris wrote off rural America, assuming urban/suburban margins would compensate,” added the report.
The report also found Harris lacked a coherent message about herself. “Harris struggled with definition beyond ‘not Trump’ and ‘prosecutor vs. felon.’ The truncated campaign timeline didn’t help, but the campaign did not quickly resolve on how to tag Trump and define Harris,” concluded the report.
The report highlighted one of the more damaging attack ads launched by Trump’s operation at Harris, titled, “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you.”
The report claims that Harris’s campaign pollsters “all recognized the attack as very effective.”
“If the Vice President would not change her position – and she did not – then there was nothing which would have worked as a response,” the report concluded.
Dems Whiffed on Defining Trump and Overestimated His Weaknesses
The report harps on the theme that Democrats are unable to land punches in the current media environment, which it argues is overly saturated with right-wing messaging.
“At times, it seems Democrats are trying to win arguments while Republicans are focused on winning elections. Democrats operate in an ecosystem defined by reason even in cycles when the electorate is defined by rage,” argued the report.
“The difference is right-wing interests take a longer-term approach and amplify polarizing messaging and candidates within the Democratic family with the intention of ‘othering’ all Democrats. Without aggressive pushback and tactics, it works,” added the report.
The report argues that Democrats whiffed on believing Trump was going into the election unpopular.
“The retrospective job approval for Trump was too high, and the campaign and allies failed to remind voters of his incompetence,” concluded the report, adding, “The idea Trump’s negatives were ‘baked in’ is a major failure of analysis and reality, given how his favorability has cratered less than a year into this term.”
Read the full report here.
The post 5 Key Takeaways From the DNC’s Highly Controversial Autopsy on Trump’s Win first appeared on Mediaite.
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