Building a Democratic Party to save our democracy
DNC's hide-and-seek with the 2024 autopsy is emblematic of systemic problems
When the lead story in most Democratic Party circles for many weeks has been the so-called Autopsy of the 2024 election that DNC Chair Ken Martin promised to release, but held back for months and months to growing criticism and suspicion of a cover-up, I confess that I’m more worried now than ever before that the Democratic Party doesn’t know how to tie its own shoes.
Let me explain.
The Autopsy itself was a flat nothing burger, a failure from cover to cover. Read it for yourself, if you have the stomach. (Available here.) Or take the word of others who have read all 192 pages and summarized it here, here and here. Personally, I only made it through the first 30-40 pages before I realized there was no reason to subject myself to this misery.
What I’ve concluded: Ken Martin recruited someone to prepare this so-called Autopsy who was unqualified and incapable of delivering anything close to an objective analysis of the Democratic Party’s failures in the 2024 election. The first misstep. Ken Martin wasn’t happy with the report that he received and decided to bury it. The second misstep. The DNC leadership circled the wagons to help Martin cover up this fiasco, and the resultant whitewashing, was the third misstep.
With all of these missteps, a casual observer must conclude that the Party leaders can’t tie their own shoes.
These missteps follow a disturbing pattern which leads me to believe that an undemocratic culture has fossilized within the national Democratic Party, and I don’t have confidence that it will change anytime soon. The Democratic Party falls all over itself trying to keep the truth from its base — whether its Biden’s unfitness for office in 2023-2024 or a 192-pp. report that’s unfit for prime time in 2025-2026, as Ken Martin later confessed. Understandably, voters have lost trust in the Democratic Party. I can easily attest to this growing distrust based on many conversations I’ve had with voters in Michigan and New Mexico.
A decent Autopsy probably would have uncovered what the team at Roots Action found in its analysis here.
Voter Disenchantment: Losing a whopping 6.8 million voters who supported Biden in 2020 proved pivotal in this extremely close election. Harris’s inability to mobilize these pro-Biden voters may have been the campaign’s biggest failure.
Biden’s Betrayal: Former President Joe Biden’s disastrous decision to run for reelection, and his stubborn refusal to step aside until very late in the process, robbed voters of a Democratic primary process, created confusion and chaos, and severely hindered Democrats’ chances.
Abandoning the Working-Class Base: With millions of Americans already disenchanted and desperate due to inflation, the Harris campaign lost this essential Democratic base by focusing on courting Republicans, kowtowing to corporate donors’ interests, and failing to confront the role of corporate greed in escalating inflation.
The Gaza Effect: There is ample evidence that Harris lost many voters, especially young voters, Arab-Americans, and critical support in Michigan and elsewhere, due to the campaign’s failure to shift or even signal a potential shift in policy on Israel and Palestine.
Losing Young Voters: Extensive evidence shows a huge drop-off in both turnout and Democratic support among young voters aged 18-29.
Whether or not these five factors, or perhaps others, were responsible for Kamala Harris’ loss in 2024, is not the fundamental question. Does the Democratic Party have the cojónes to engage in a meaningful process of self-reflection, and learn the lessons it needs to learn to move the Party and the Country forward? At best, I fear the answer is genuinely unknown. At worse, the Democratic Party is besieged by an insular cabal of powerbrokers that value their own positions more than democracy itself. And that frightens me as much as the Gestapo that Trump may send to the polls in November.
I briefly attended the Minnesota DFL Convention in Rochester last week and observed the enthusiasm and energy among the delegates. I mingled in the crowd and overheard the strong opinions on the issues and candidates, and the camaraderie and genuine respect I witnessed were palpable.
I sat in the balcony of the Mayo Civic Center and listened to several of the opening speeches, and I was struck by the words that Minnesota State Senator John Hoffman shared to thunderous applause. Hoffman was shot 9 times in his Minnesota home (June 2025) and his wife was shot 8 times in a politically-motivated attack. Both miraculously survived, but a few hours later former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman were gunned down by the same perp in their home and killed.
Hoffman’s words of inclusion and engagement with our neighbors, everyone having a seat at the table, and everyone being heard, ended with Paul Wellstone’s iconic plea “We all do better when we all do better.”
For the next five months, I want the lead story in every Democratic Party circle to be — “OMG! The DNC has cast its consultants and long-time political operatives into the trash bin, recognizing that the young people have an agenda that works for all of us, so the baton has been passed.”
