{"id":663918,"date":"2026-05-25T10:40:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T10:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/663918\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T10:40:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T10:40:20","slug":"the-democrats-2024-autopsy-fails-to-confront-the-truth-norman-solomon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/663918\/","title":{"rendered":"The Democrats\u2019 2024 autopsy fails to confront the truth | Norman Solomon"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the Democratic National Committee finally released its autopsy on the 2024 election disaster, not even the DNC chair could defend it. \u201cI don\u2019t endorse what\u2019s in this report,\u201d Ken Martin conceded<\/a> as the autopsy went public on Thursday. After several months of withholding the autopsy on the grounds of not wanting it to be a distraction, Martin fessed up at last: \u201cWhen I received the report late last year, it wasn\u2019t ready for primetime. Not even close. And because no source material was provided, fixing it would have meant starting over, from the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response, a former Obama speechwriter, Jon Favreau, summed up<\/a> eight stages of Martin\u2019s tortuous process that has spanned more than a year: \u201cPromise to release autopsy; put incompetent friend in charge; incompetent friend produces incoherent product; announce you\u2019re not releasing the autopsy; lie about why; gaslight people who ask, saying they\u2019re the problem; face internal revolt; release autopsy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now released, the draft report<\/a> is floating in a weird zone of being and not being the DNC\u2019s autopsy at the same time. A disclaimer in red at the top of every page declares that \u201cthis document reflects the views of the author, not the DNC,\u201d and the DNC \u201ccannot independently verify the claims presented\u201d. What\u2019s more, most pages include red boxed insertions taking issue with claims in the autopsy (\u201cNo sourcing provided for several claims in this section\u201d on one page is followed by \u201cAppears to conflate family and sick leave\u201d on the next), with the DNC in the strange role of a schoolteacher critically marking up an assigned term paper.<\/p>\n

The report has set off a barrage of harsh critiques from mainstream quarters. The New York Times reported<\/a> that the autopsy \u201cis disorganized and leaves empty entire sections\u201d while \u201coften veering into political clich\u00e9s and hard-to-follow explanations\u201d. A CNN analysis pointed out<\/a> that the autopsy \u201ccontains lots of errors and curious inclusions \u2013 even some that are puzzling to have in a draft\u201d.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the report evades discussing a pair of key political decisions, which enabled Joe Biden to run for re-election until it was too late \u2013 and then coronated Kamala Harris as the party\u2019s nominee without any process involving Democratic voters.<\/p>\n

Instead, the autopsy focuses much attention on matters like ad buys and fundraising, without coming to terms with why so many voters in 2024 were uninspired by the Democratic ticket and what it stood for. The emphasis is on the mechanics of the party as an electoral vehicle, without substantively addressing why so many millions of disaffected voters \u2013 particularly the young \u2013 turned away and refused to turn out because they wanted the party to move in a very different direction.<\/p>\n

But the most extreme evasion in the autopsy is the dodging of the crucial importance of the Gaza genocide<\/a>. In this way, the autopsy is in keeping with how the DNC has continued to function<\/a>. As the governing body of the Democratic party, the DNC has twisted itself into untenable knots while excluding concerns about Gaza and Palestinians from any serious internal debate. Martin, like the party\u2019s congressional leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, has continued to pretend that the US government has not been arming Israel\u2019s genocide.<\/p>\n

In an autopsy of close to 50,000 words, not one of them is \u201cGaza\u201d, or \u201cPalestinians\u201d or \u201cIsrael\u201d or \u201cgenocide\u201d. Yet credible accounts<\/a> tell of meetings where the autopsy\u2019s author, the Democratic consultant Paul Rivera, privately acknowledged that Harris\u2019s stance on Gaza hurt her election chances. The executive director of the Institute for Middle East Understanding, Margaret DeReus, said in a statement<\/a> on Thursday that \u201cKen Martin should release the information that the author of the autopsy told us clearly and unambiguously, which is that DNC officials\u2019 review of their own data found Biden\u2019s support for Israel to be a net-negative for Democrats in 2024.\u201d<\/p>\n

A wide detour around clear polling data<\/a> was necessary to keep out of the autopsy the reality of measurable damage that Harris\u2019s support for arming Israel did to her campaign. In August 2024, an IMEU\/YouGov poll in three swing states found<\/a> that for every vote Harris might lose by supporting an arms embargo on Israel, she stood to gain five votes. The mindset that chose to block such facts from getting into the autopsy was consistent with the way that the DNC has automatically functioned.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a type of corruption to exclude such information from the autopsy \u2013 concealing the political implications of what happened in 2024 and what might happen in the future. Three-quarters<\/a> of Democrats agree that \u201cIsrael is committing genocide,\u201d and the Pew Research Center recently reported<\/a> that 80% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents \u201ccurrently have an unfavorable view of Israel\u201d. The autopsy is in sync with the routine evasions that have been perpetuating<\/a> the DNC\u2019s failure to reflect the majority views of registered Democrats who oppose military aid to Israel.<\/p>\n

Last summer, while a Gallup poll<\/a> was showing that just 8% of Democrats approved of Israel\u2019s military actions in Gaza, Martin said<\/a> at a meeting of DNC delegates from across the country that \u201cthere\u2019s a divide in our party on this issue.\u201d He has held to the outdated claim that Democrats are \u201cdivided\u201d on the subject, while the gaping division is actually between top-ranking Democrats and the party\u2019s base.<\/p>\n

The DNC\u2019s new autopsy embodies that disconnect rather than addressing the need to end it. Ironically, the autopsy itself is a case in point of what it should have spotlighted and critiqued about the 2024 Harris campaign \u2013 refusal to accede to the compelling moral and political reasons to reject Biden\u2019s Israel policy. (A coherent alternative to the DNC\u2019s autopsy is the one that my RootsAction colleagues released several months ago, \u201cAutopsy: How Democrats Lost the White House<\/a>\u201d.)<\/p>\n

The crisis of Democratic leadership is undermining the party\u2019s potential to do what is imperative \u2013 roll back Republican power in the midterms and then win the race for the presidency in 2028.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the Democratic National Committee finally released its autopsy on the 2024 election disaster, not even the DNC…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-663918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}