Author of DNC Autopsy Found Gaza Policy Hurt Harris in 2024—But Never Submitted Finding to Party Leadership

When the Democratic National Committee at long last released its "autopsy" report on former Vice President Kamala Harris' loss in the 2024 election in May, one of the most puzzling aspects was the lack of any conclusions related to her and former President Joe Biden's support for Israel's genocide in Gaza.

Holly Otterbein of Axios reported on Thursday that the document's author, Paul Rivera, did indeed look into the issue of Gaza and found it had a role in Harris’ loss. But he did not submit the findings to the DNC for inclusion in the report. Axios did not include an explanation for that decision.

Rivera confirmed Axios’ reporting from back in February that the conclusions had been shared with the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project, a pro-Palestinian think tank, which told the DNC that Harris’ failure to break from Biden’s policy on Israel's US-backed assault on Gaza proved a liability with progressive voters, especially in Michigan.

This news led to speculation that DNC chair Ken Martin, who had resisted calls to release the autopsy in full, was doing so to avoid publicizing findings that portrayed Israel as an albatross around the party's neck.

Rivera alleged earlier this week that Martin and top DNC brass withheld other portions of his report from public view, including a chapter criticizing the party's overreliance on “self-enriching” consultants and party operatives out of touch with voters. Rivera claims to have handed Martin a three-ring binder containing the report, but Martin denies that this occurred.

Rivera, who was fired from his advisory role at the DNC following widespread public backlash to the release of the autopsy, has since published his own 564-page report on the 2024 election, which includes several pages examining the role of Gaza.

As of Election Day 2024, more than 43,000 Palestinians had been killed, including at least 13,300 identified children, according to figures from the Gaza Ministry of Health, and protests had swept the nation demanding that Biden cut off military aid to Israel.

While Rivera's report does not conclude that Gaza alone cost Harris the election, it found that it had a clear role in alienating voters who would have otherwise supported Harris.

It found that in Michigan, one of the key swing states that handed victory to Trump, the losses in heavily Arab and Middle Eastern communities like West Bloomfield, Sterling Heights, Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, and Hamtramck, were significant.

In these communities, Harris received 30,850 fewer votes in 2024 than Biden did in 2020, while Trump gained 14,874, a swing accounting for nearly 20% of the 234,291-vote shift that handed President Donald Trump the state.

Rivera noted that the Uncommitted Movement, which garnered more than 700,000 votes nationally in the 2024 primary, originated in Dearborn, where Harris lost nearly a third of the support Biden had received in 2020. In nearby Hamtramck, her support tanked by 39% from Biden's in 2020.

Notably, many of these voters did not flock to Trump, but to Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who received more than 12,000 votes across Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, and Hamtramck.

"The political analysis is simple," Rivera wrote. "The electoral results and voting shifts in Michigan and elsewhere demonstrate the impact the crisis had on the Harris campaign."

He concluded that the issue could not simply be boiled down to "messaging" but to concrete policy.

“For many voters whose family members were displaced, subject to violence, or killed, the inability of the administration to effectively intervene was unacceptable,” he wrote. “In 2024, absent a real end to military action and restoration of civilian control in Gaza, many voters in Michigan and elsewhere would not be satisfied.”

Asked by Common Dreams to elaborate on why he did not provide these findings to the DNC, Rivera did not immediately respond to a request sent through his website’s press contact.

Zeeshan Aleem, a political columnist at MSNOW was puzzled by the decision by Rivera not to provide the Gaza findings to the DNC.

"This is all strange in ways that either suggest dishonesty or stupidity," he said. "The author of the DNC report said he did conclude that Gaza hurt Kamala, but didn’t include that finding in the report he submitted to the DNC. Why?"

The opacity and conflicting narratives surrounding the autopsy's release continue to befuddle critics and onlookers.

Dave Weigel, a political reporter at Semafor, described the idea that Gaza cost Harris votes as "a water-is-wet finding guarded like the Ark of the Covenant."

"Martin could have just admitted that, yes, this issue that got Harris protested everywhere and helped Trump win Michigan hurt the campaign," he said. "Instead, it became a secret that Holly pried loose and generated an extra year of negative stories."

The exclusion of Gaza from the official report released in May became ammunition for some commentators seeking to downplay the idea that Democrats' support for Israel is an electoral liability or to accuse the IMEU Policy Project of spinning a false narrative.

Responding to the release of Rivera's report, media critic Adam Johnson mocked those who framed it as a "conspiracy theory."

"What’s so important to understand is that anyone denying Gaza harmed Harris’ chances is a rank propagandist. Nobody believes this in good faith," he said. "Obviously it did. We can debate the degree of harm it had, but clearly it was significant and had many downstream deflating effects."