For months, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin was dogged by a simple question: Why not release the autopsy report on why the party lost the 2024 presidential election, as he promised?
The report, prepared by a part-time Democratic consultant, was turned in last year. Martin effectively shelved it. There were calls for it to be released. Martin said that, even though he promised to do so when he ran in a very competitive election for chair following the election, releasing it now would only serve as a distraction.
But following a disastrous interview Martin did on Pod Save America weeks ago, the “distraction” suddenly became the fact that the DNC was withholding it.
Now that CNN got its hands on it and published it Thursday, it appears Martin overthought this. Instead of calling the autopsy project a “distraction”, he should have used a different word beginning with the letter D: dumb.
If you have not yet read the 192-page report, here is some real service journalism: maybe don’t.
This is not because the findings were so toxic or jaw-dropping that they needed to be swept under the rug. It’s quite the opposite.
It doesn’t address what Democrats should have done to convince President Biden to either not seek re-election or drop out earlier. There was zero, no really ZERO, about Biden and his age in the report. It doesn’t get at the fundamental problem today of a political party polling at a 27 percent approval rating. Nor does it offer any solutions for how Democrats could get out of a hole they keep digging.
Here is an example of the gibberish included in the report: “Building to win requires new thinking, and building to last requires thinking about more than the next election. It requires finding the best way to connect with the right voters in the right places, and if 2024 has proven anything, there is enough money to do it all the right way.”
Thanks, boss.
If there was any suggestion, it’s that Democrats should move away from cultural and identity politics and toward issues of class and affordability. New York City Mayor Zorhan Mamdani, along with Governors Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, did this very thing successfully last fall, so they might not find this a big revelation. The same could be said for nearly every Democrat and Republican running in this midterm, where affordability shows up as the dominant issue on voters’ minds.
For those looking for New England references, let me help you out. There are zero references to Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, even though she was a top Biden campaign ally. There is one reference to Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, but that was only to note how a Super PAC gave money to her 2020 presidential campaign. OK.
There are more references to Ohio Republican Senator Bernie Moreno than there are to Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders. There is a passing reference to Maine’s Second Congressional District as a swing district, even though it never really was in reality. There are zero references to dumping New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary to protect Biden from a potential primary challenge, even though it was one of the few things the DNC actually had control over. There are no references to Rhode Island, even though Gina Raimondo was a key cabinet official and political adviser to Biden.
Heck, there wasn’t even a standalone reference to Tim Walz, much less the truncated selection process that made him Harris’ running mate.
To be sure, official political party autopsies are rarely relevant or important. The point of them, almost always conducted by the losing party, is simply to tell donors and activists that something is being done to examine best practices and to give people an outlet to complain about what they think went wrong.
The only autopsy to truly enter the political and cultural zeitgeist was the one written by the Republican Party following President Barack Obama’s reelection in 2012 over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Among its recommendations back then was that the party needed to better appeal to immigrant communities, communities of color, and women.
Then the party nominated Donald Trump for president.
But at least that report didn’t misspell governors’ names or get election results wrong - the DNC report did both - calling every data point inside into question.
Democrats are locked out of power in Washington. They are being outmaneuvered structurally in state houses around the country over redistricting. And they are a party defined mostly by what they are not, as in: they are not Trump.
The party desperately needs an examination and an argument for a path forward. The problem with this autopsy is that it’s dead on arrival.
James Pindell is a Globe political reporter who reports and analyzes American politics, especially in New England.