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Unpublished DNC Autopsy Chapter Criticized 'Self-Enriching' Party Operatives
"There are too many people who have become generationally wealthy off politics and drive too much of the decision-making within the ecosystem."
Aug 03, 2026
The New York Times on Monday published what it described as a "missing chapter" of the Democratic National Committee's widely criticized "autopsy" of the 2024 presidential election.
The chapter, titled "What Happened in 2024" and provided to the Times by Democratic strategist Paul Rivera, offers criticisms of party consultants who are "self-enriching" and out of touch with the concerns of ordinary voters.
Specifically, the chapter questions whether Democratic politicians and operatives have a grasp on the economic realities facing most Americans, while calling for "a fundamental re-evaluation" of whether Democrats "really understand the wants and needs of voters."
"An emerging critique of Democratic decision-making," the chapter states, "is there are too many people who have become generationally wealthy off politics and drive too much of the decision-making within the ecosystem. This is deeply frustrating to many... who want to try a different set of politics but keep banging their heads up against a system proven to be inflexible and self-enriching."
The chapter adds that "many of the people who worked at the highest levels of the party" are "financially secure," and thus potentially insulated "from the realities many Americans were encountering in their lives."
In an interview with the Times, Rivera claimed that he personally handed the missing chapter to DNC Chair Ken Martin in a three-ring binder earlier this year.
Rivera said he had no specific insight into why the chapter was not included with the report that the DNC released in May.
"Whether that was a conscious decision on their part to bury the section for the purposes of hiding a paragraph, I don’t know," the Democratic strategist told the Times. "That's a them question. What I can tell you is they had it, and they made a decision not to release it."
Martin, however, flatly denied that Rivera had ever personally handed him the chapter.
“This alleged report section was not in any binder I reviewed," said Martin in a written statement given to the Times. "If we had this in May, we would have released it with the rest of the report."
Martin also called it ridiculous to suggest that he would have suppressed a section of the final DNC report to avoid offending the party's consultant class.
"If I or the DNC had report materials that went after self-enriching consultants, we absolutely would have included them," Martin insisted, noting his own past promises "to hold the consultant-industrial complex accountable and ensure the party only pays for work that actually helps us win."
The Times report noted that the DNC's autopsy featured a section titled "What Happened" that was listed as "pending" on the grounds that it "was not provided by author."
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The Democratic Party Has a History Problem
Party leadership needs to study and learn from what the Wall Street wing has cost in terms of lost elections and the increasing tilt of the playing field.
May 28, 2026
In his stumbling explanation of the muddled autopsy report on the 2024 election debacle, Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin uttered two pieces of wisdom that regrettably, neither he nor the party has heeded: “The Democratic brand is in trouble and needs repair,” and “I agree with folks who have said we have to learn from the past to win the future.” Had they followed that advice, they would have seen how history tells a neglected and important story.
It begins when Bill Clinton was handed the keys to the White House by a group of largely Southern officials who formed the New Democrats with the mission of putting a Southern, pro-business candidate in the White House. With its pointed references to Reagan speeches and policies, Clinton’s Second Inaugural signaled a devil’s bargain that ended a century of Democratic Party policies.
In 1896, William Jennings Bryan had articulated the level playing field principles that served as the Democrats’ North Star for much of the last century: “There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.” In the term following his inaugural rejection of those principles, Clinton repealed one of the crown jewels of the New Deal, the Glass-Steagall Act regulating banks, and handed social media the gift of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, exempting them from the rules governing print and broadcasting.
In the years since Bill Clinton left the White House for a comfortable retirement, the New Democrats asserted control of the party, courting big donors with the pro-Wall Street policies resembling those of his second term. Their strategy uncannily mirrored that of Donald Trump’s Republicans by offering positions on social issues that appeased elements of the base while supporting economic policies benefiting corporate America. In their fight for the soul of the party, the New Democrats pulled no punches, blocking Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2016 and primarying 2026 opponents with the zeal of Donald Trump.
One lesson history teaches us is that if inequalities are allowed to fester, things can get very ugly.
Their biggest failure may be that in abandoning the level playing field principle, the New Democrats offered no substitute, save triangulation. Today most of us would stumble over trying to define the Democratic Party in one sentence, but one can easily do that for the Republicans—less taxes, less government. With the midterms six months away, this lack of a unified message already has the faithful worried.
The historical data missing from the autopsy and Martin’s explanations tells the story of what the ascension of the Wall Street Democrats has cost their party and the country. Since 2000, the Democrats have controlled the House only 4 out of 15 terms and the Senate only 6 out of 15. For only four years have Democrats held a majority of state governerships. Democratic presidential victories were anomalies. Barack Obama benefited from a record turnout of BIPOC voters. Joe Biden won because of the mishandling of Covid-19. Even allowing for gerrymandering and voter suppression, it appears clear that the Democratic Party has been in decline for some time.
Given the pro-Wall Street leanings of both parties, we should not be surprised that we have essentially been governed by a minority. Since 2000, the winning presidential candidate has only averaged 30.18% of the voting-eligible population. Today, only 27% of voters identify with either party, while 45% identify as independents. That is the lowest total ever for Democrats.
The numbers in various data and reports tell how the tilt of the playing field continues to widen. Although real total wealth has tripled since 1989, the share of the top 10% has increased from 63% to 72%, but the bottom 50% saw their share decline from 4% to 2%. Meanwhile, labor’s share of production has declined ominously. According to the St. Louis Federal Reserve, it fell from 64% in 2001 to 56% in 2023. During most of the 1950s and 60s it hovered around 60%.
Business concentration recalls the trusts that sparked such widespread discontent during the late 19th century. The best figures come from a study by the Democratic staff of the House Committee on Small Business that was mothballed after its release in December 2023—and goes unmentioned in the autopsy. Bristling with footnotes, the eye-opening Report on Competition in the Small Business Economy cites a Boston Federal Reserve study that shows the economy is 50% more concentrated today than in 2005. It goes on to state, “The dramatic increase in income and wealth inequality seen over the past four decades in the US can also be largely attributed to higher levels of concentration across industries.” Sounding like an outraged 1890 Farmers’ Alliance tract, the study paints a grim picture of today’s farmers: “From the seeds they plant, to the fertilizer in the soil to the machinery that allows them to make it all happen at scale, the price they pay at every step is at the whim of a handful of companies.”
Faced with similar conditions during the Gilded Age, discontented workers and farmers organized to press for the Sherman, Interstate Commerce, and Safety Appliance Acts; laid the groundwork for the 16th, 17th, and 19th amendments; initiated bureaus of labor statistics and factory inspections; and enhanced access to higher education. Because they feared both parties were the tools of tycoons, the discontented also formed new parties, of which the Greenbackers and Populists are the most notable. Most of all, in a flurry of civic engagement, they founded groups like the Grange, Knights of Labor, Women’s Christian Temperance Movement, and Farmers’ Alliance.
Whether today’s discontent will have a similar impact remains an open question. A good part of the answer will depend on whether people like Ken Martin continue to support the Wall Street wing of the party or realize what that support has cost in terms of lost elections and the increasing tilt of the playing field. What is clear is that the drastically tilted playing field has become extremely volatile. One lesson history teaches us is that if inequalities are allowed to fester, things can get very ugly. During the discontent of the Gilded Age, lynchings averaged 150 per year between 1881 and 1900, or one every 2.4 days. Another 1,400 people perished in riots, in the most violent three decades in our history. All of us can see and fear the growling, anvil-shaped clouds that threaten to darken our lives, as they did over a century ago.
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The 'Autopsy' Written by a Corpse
Stay as far away as you can from this DNC report. Trust me.
May 24, 2026
After an extended pressure campaign, Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin finally agreed to release the DNC’s “autopsy report” on the 2024 election. It’s the first document I’ve ever read that would have been better if it had been written by AI. Martin himself said the report “does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards.” That’s for damn sure. As we’ll see, however, that doesn’t let Martin off the hook.
I downloaded the document before reviewing my news feed, where I quickly learned that many like-minded people began exactly as I did: by searching for the word “Gaza.” Result? “Not found.” I then tried “Palestine.” Result? “Not found.” How about “Israel”? “Not found.”
These omissions are particularly striking since one activist group was told by report author Paul Rivera that DNC data showed that the administration’s support for the Gaza genocide was, “in their words, a ‘net-negative’ in the 2024 election.” Axios, which reported on that exchange, added that it “independently verified that Democratic officials conducting the autopsy believed the issue harmed the party’s standing with some voters.”
RootsAction was one of the groups pressing for the autopsy’s release, and co-founder Jeff Cohen called the document “almost worthless.” Cohen condemned the failure to mention “the Biden/Harris administration’s Israel policy that abetted the Gaza massacre,” Biden’s initial decision to run for re-election, and what he called Kamala Harris’ “lack of principles.”
Other words that can’t be found in the autopsy include “war,” “military,” “defense” (in the military sense), “peace,” “Medicare,” and “Social Security.” The report fails to address either the US’ runaway military spending or the ongoing attempts to undermine the country’s social contract.
The report’s only conceivable value will be for future anthropologists, who will find it provides considerable insight into the culture and folkways of the professional Democratic class. Its introduction reads like the kind of word salad a teenager might come up with when asked to write a 1200-word essay on a topic they forgot to study. There’s a lot of meandering, some restatements of the assignment, and a hastily looked-up quotation. Don’t read it unless you’re prepared to wade through prose like this:
... the voters decide which choice is most resonant. One party declares itself the winner, and the other party declares that the fight is far from finished.
Effective parties, understanding history rarely repeats itself, it does often rhyme, make it a point to study electoral outcomes after each cycle to identify potential improvements to every aspect of their campaigns. John Adams argued ‘"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right…and a desire to know."
Believe me, it doesn’t get any better from there.
The document is 192 pages long, but many of those pages are blank. The page called “Leadership Message”: blank. (Any comment about that would be like shooting fish in a barrel.) “Executive Summary”: blank. And so on.
The section entitled “Electoral Landscape” includes sentences like this: “We must organize everywhere to Win Anywhere”—which doesn’t make any sense. You don’t have to organize everywhere to win anywhere. And Democrats already win somewhere! Those “somewheres” are called “Blue States.” The problem is they have to win more “somewheres,” and you can’t win somewhere if you’re “everywhere”! You have to be there to win there!
The next sentence begins, “Winning Anywhere means providing for a renewed focus on the voters of Middle America and the South ...” Wait. One sentence ago we were everywhere. Now we’re in Middle America and the South, which happen to be two readily-identifiable somewheres.
That’s what consultant-speak will do to the human mind.
The document, perhaps unsurprisingly, praises the centrist Democratic orientation of the late 1980s and 1990s. But the same pro-corporate orientation contributed heavily to the party’s 2024 losses. That’s what you get what you call on a party to emulate the centrists’ “future-focused directive”—by adopting a 40-year-old strategy.
The report also states that “the DNC and ASDC (Association of State Democratic Parties) have conducted more than 1200 interviews to assess the health of our 57 state parties—in every state, district, or territory.” Where are those interviews?
Martin reportedly told DNC members that Rivera no longer “is with or advises the DNC in any capacity.” But the buck stops with the boss, not the consultant.
I get it; Martin has a tough job. But he campaigned for his position by promising an autopsy. When Rivera’s proved to be unusable, Martin was obliged to have it re-done. By failing to do so, he reneged on his campaign promise. In the meantime, a little transparency would have gone a long way toward avoiding the mess he now faces.
Don’t read the DNC document unless you’re a masochist or a journalist (provided there’s a difference between the two). Read this one instead. Stay far away from the DNC report. Trust me, you’ll “win somewhere” by being anywhere else.Keep ReadingShow Less
'Not Up to the Task': Calls Mount for Ken Martin to Resign Over 2024 DNC Autopsy Debacle
"The DNC should select a new leader who demonstrates competence, creativity, moral clarity, and a relentless commitment to actually changing the broken Democratic Party brand.”
May 22, 2026
The disastrous release of the Democratic National Committee's 2024 election "autopsy" report on Thursday has brought about a reckoning for the committee's chair, Ken Martin, who is facing calls to resign from legislators and other influential figures in the party.
The 192-page report, written by strategist Paul Rivera in the wake of former Vice President Kamala Harris' loss to President Donald Trump, was panned as amateurish and incomplete, even more than 18 months after the election. Rivera was reportedly fired on Friday.
Aside from being filled with glaring spelling and factual errors and containing several unfinished sections and self-contradicting annotations, it neglected key issues widely believed to have contributed to the Democratic nominee's defeat: Most acutely, her continued backing of Israel as it perpetrated a genocide in Gaza, her inability to address working- and middle-class voters' concerns about affordability, and the shambolic attempt by former President Joe Biden to run for a second term despite his old age and his earlier indications he would serve for only four years.
Many Democrats now see it as a damning indictment of Martin, who was elected as DNC chair last year in part on promises to conduct a thorough and transparent review of the party's defeat. Not helping was his sudden pivot in late 2025 to attempt to bury the report he once championed, only releasing it this week after it leaked to CNN despite mounting pressure from party members.
On Friday morning, Axios quoted an ideological mix of Democratic legislators describing the report's release as the final straw for Martin.
"He should resign," Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) told Axios, citing "his lack of leadership" and saying it is "utterly nuts it took us this long to release the autopsy."
In a radio interview Thursday, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said in response to a caller who argued Martin should be replaced: "I agree... Having what we have right now is not doing it."
Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas) told Semafor that "there doesn't seem to be a plan to turn things around and the clock is ticking... I believe it's time for him to move on."
Despite a push by Martin's allies to arm state party chairs with talking points expressing that they are "fully confident in his leadership," NOTUS reported that inside private DNC group chats and one-on-one conversations, dissension is brewing, and there is even talk of forcing a vote of no confidence to oust the chairman.
"People feel gaslit" by Martin's flip-flopping, one unnamed DNC member told the outlet. "You kept telling people it was coming, then when you didn’t release it, you didn’t even tell everyone the real reason why.”
“While I don’t believe that there are enough votes to pass a vote of no confidence yet, I think there’s more of a permission structure now to have a more open conversation about it,” said another member who NOTUS described as an ally of Martin's. “If they think this is going to make things go away, no, this is only going to ramp up now.”
That's the hope of many in the party's grassroots, who said the entire saga demonstrated Martin's unfitness for a role with major responsibilities as Democrats head into existentially important elections in 2026 and 2028.
Dan Pfeiffer—a former Obama administration staffer whose Pod Save America podcast cohosts held Martin's feet to the fire as he fought to keep the autopsy hidden—called the release "a disaster of his own making."
"He didn’t pick a qualified person to run the autopsy. The fact that he was apparently shocked by the work product shows there was no oversight of the process," Pfeiffer said on social media. "Once he saw that the report was poorly done, he just decided to start lying to everyone about why it wasn't being released."
"In '28, the DNC will set the primary calendar, decide how delegates are awarded, sponsor the debates, and put on the convention," he said. "If no one trusts the DNC, it will be harder to unite the party around the eventual nominee."
Amanda Litman, the president of Run For Something, a group that recruits progressive candidates for office, said in a video posted to social media Thursday that putting together a report composed of "pure gibberish," without access to any of the underlying interviews or materials that buoyed its conclusions, called into question the DNC's ability to be "a fair, competent... conductor of the Democratic presidential primary."
"Ken Martin is not up to the task of being DNC chair—the most important part of which is preparing to run the presidential primary process with trust and competency—and should resign," she added on Friday.
David Hogg, who served as the DNC vice chair in 2025 before being pushed out by Martin over his efforts to support primary challengers against some entrenched party elders, said the autopsy saga was a "demoralizing joke" for the party.
In a release from his political action committee, Leaders We Deserve, Hogg said, "Martin should resign, and the DNC should select a new leader who demonstrates competence, creativity, moral clarity, and a relentless commitment to actually changing the broken Democratic Party brand."
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'Almost Worthless': Progressives Rip 2024 Autopsy the DNC Didn’t Want You To See
"At a time when Republicans are polling at historic lows, Democrats need to capitalize and offer a better vision for the country," said one critic. "This isn’t it."
May 21, 2026
Critics on Thursday slammed the controversial—and until now secret—Democratic National Committee autopsy of the 2024 election, which completely omitted some of the biggest issues affecting the contest, including President Joe Biden's decision to seek reelection, the manner in which Vice President Kamala Harris replaced him atop the ticket, and the Gaza genocide.
The 2024 postmortem—which was written by strategist Paul Rivera and ostensibly examines why and how Democrats lost the White House to President Donald Trump and control of Congress to Republicans—was published online Thursday after it was obtained CNN. DNC Chair Ken Martin told CNN that he was "releasing the report as we received it, in its entirety, unedited and unabridged,” for the sake of "full transparency."
“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," Martin said. “After last November’s massive Democratic wins, I didn’t want to create a distraction, but by not putting the report out, I ended up creating an even bigger distraction. For that, I sincerely apologize."
RootsAction, the progressive advocacy group that led the push to release the autopsy, said Thursday that "to call the report a disgrace would be an understatement."
"The report focuses extensively on ad spending and fundraising, without discussing the Democratic platform, policy positions, or political context of the 2024 election," the group noted. "The word 'affordability,' arguably the most important issue in the 2024 election, appears twice in the 129-page report."
"Martin and the DNC are trying to wash their hands of the report and its contents," RootsAction continued. "In a hasty, almost amateurish markup, the DNC has gone out of its way to poke holes in the legitimacy of the very report it commissioned... While Martin may feel that this absolves him of the responsibility to answer for this pitiful document, it should only intensify scrutiny of his leadership of the DNC."
Speculation abounded that the report contained damning findings about the electoral harm caused by the Biden-Harris administration's support for Israel as it waged both a genocidal war in Gaza and expanded its illegal occupation, colonization, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
Opposition to the administration's complicity in the slaughter, as well as Biden and Harris' refusal to acknowledge the genocide or seek a ceasefire, was embodied by the Uncommitted movement and its 30 Democratic National Convention delegates.
There isn't a single mention of Gaza, Palestine, Israel, genocide, or Uncommitted in the autopsy.
"We needed a serious DNC autopsy. This alleged autopsy is almost worthless," Jeff Cohen, co-founder of RootsAction—which led the battle for the DNC to release the report—told Common Dreams on Thursday.
"There's no mention of the Biden/Harris administration's Israel policy that abetted the Gaza massacre," Cohen continued. "That cost votes, and helped Trump win. Earlier leaks suggested that the DNC autopsy would discuss Gaza's impact on voters."
Establishment Democrats don't get it.There is no amount of consulting, brand management, influencer outreach, or narrative shaping that can save a campaign with no message at its core. www.commondreams.org/opinion/why-...
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— RootsAction (@rootsaction.org) May 20, 2026 at 9:26 AM
The Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) noted that "polls and reporting leading up to and after the 2024 election showed Biden and Harris’s support for providing weapons to Israel was deeply unpopular with their own voters and an electoral liability."
“Ken Martin should release the information that the author of the autopsy told us clearly and unambiguously, which is that DNC officials’ review of their own data found Biden’s support for Israel to be a net-negative for Democrats in 2024," IMEU policy project executive director Margaret DeReus said Thursday.
While the autopsy mentions inflation 18 times, it does so within the context of adjusting fundraising figures for inflation and not the affordability crisis—arguably the number one issue Trump campaigned on, before exacerbating the crisis via trade wars and actual wars once back in office.
The DNC postmortem argues that Democrats have steadily lost the trust of working-class and non-college voters since the high-water mark of former President Barack Obama's historic 2008 victory.
"The Democratic Party has always tried to be seen as the party of the people, the party of workers, fair play, and civil discourse," the report states. "The party’s connections with working Americans and their families were forged through decades of organizing and engagement, the development of a vibrant and inclusive party infrastructure, and a relatable agenda which helped us connect in homes, workplaces, and neighborhoods across the country."
However, the report argues that the party defined itself as anti-Trump while failing to define what Harris and Democrats stood for, while underinvesting in state and local organizing and failing to build and maintain relationships with voters outside its coastal and urban strongholds.
"Harris wrote off rural America, assuming urban/suburban margins would compensate," the publication notes. "The Harris campaign appears to have relied on Trump being unacceptable rather than building an affirmative case for Harris.”
The autopsy concluded that so-called "identity politics" don't resonate with white male voters. The report noted the success of Trump's attack ads, particularly the anti-trans spots with the kicker, "Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you."
"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 asserts.
Some observers worried that the DNC was suggesting throwing trans people under the bus in pursuit of electoral gains. Worryingly, the only time the publication mentions transgender people, it uses an antiquated term that is offensive to many trans folk.
They used the term "transgendered." This is exactly why the Republicans attack Dems on this issue because for many their support for trans people is hollow and thus they can't defend it. Contrast that with Mamdani or AOC whose support is genuine and can wrap it in a message of economic populism.
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— Alejandra Caraballo (@esqueer.net) May 21, 2026 at 9:17 AM
Amid relentless Republican attacks on transgender people and the wider LGBTQ+ community, reproductive freedom, voting rights—especially for Black Americans—immigrants, and others, the DNC postmortem encourages future Democratic candidates to "focus less on abstract issues and identity politics, and connect with voters on the issues they say matter most, including the economy, disaster relief, and addressing housing affordability."
The autopsy's assertion that "the problem wasn't Democratic policy or party brand" drew incredulous derision from observers including gun control activist and former DNC co-vice chair David Hogg:
Taking aim at the autopsy's many failures, RootsAction asserted that the DNC had "a responsibility to turn in a report that truly grapples with the mistakes of the past so that the Democratic Party can learn from those mistakes and emerge stronger in its fight against Trumpism," but ultimately, "the DNC has utterly failed in that respect."
"The only serious autopsy so far remains the one that RootsAction published," the group said.
The RootsAction 2024 postmortem, authored by San Francisco journalist Christopher Cook, covers some of the same issues as the DNC autopsy. However, it argues that Democrats lost in 2024 because of voter disenchantment, Biden's decision to run for reelection, Democrats' abandonment of their working-class base, loss of younger voters, and "the Gaza effect."
While the DNC autopsy makes no mention of Biden's fateful decision, RootsAction's report states that "a key factor hobbling Harris’s chances in 2024 was the short timeline she had to execute her campaign—just 107 days."
"That her nomination was secured not via the traditional Democratic Party primary, but through some process of intra-administration succession, exacerbated this challenging chronology," the publication adds. "This was, of course, due to President Biden’s betrayal of his 2020 promise to be a 'bridge' president, and his tragic decision to continue running for reelection despite cognitive decline and plunging approval ratings."
Cohen lamented these omissions from the DNC report.
"There's no criticism of Biden for his insistence on seeking reelection, or the lack of any kind of open process to choose Biden's replacement," he told Common Dreams. "No analysis of Harris for her lack of principles—leading to her avoiding media platforms reaching millions of potential voters."
Criticism of the DNC report mounted throughout the day Thursday as more and more people read it.
“What’s important is what’s missing, what they’re not releasing,” former Harris communications director Ashley Etienne told Politico. "It feels like what the DNC is doing is cherry-picking the parts of it that it wants to actually release, that [are] less problematic for the party going forward."
Zenith Research founding partner Adam Carlson called the paper "an absolute mess in every sense of the word" and added that "anyone that is using its findings as justification to follow their ideological preferences for the future of the party should be laughed out of every room they go into."
Hafiz Rashid, a writer at The New Republic, said that "Martin seems to be right about the report’s flaws."
"But hiding it and not commissioning a new one—or at least not editing this one to a passable standard—is a scandal in itself," he added. "At a time when Republicans are polling at historic lows, Democrats need to capitalize and offer a better vision for the country. This isn’t it."
Here is the DNC document, as posted by CNN:
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'Why Wouldn't You Just Release It?': DNC Chair Confronted Over Buried 2024 Election Autopsy
As grassroots Democrats push national committee chair Ken Martin to release the suppressed report, a longtime party booster asked, “What’s in the report that you wouldn’t want to publicize?”
Apr 29, 2026
Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin was confronted on a podcast on Tuesday about his continued refusal to release an "autopsy" report dissecting the party's defeat in the 2024 election.
Grassroots groups have not let up on calls to release the report, which Martin said in December would not be released publicly, claiming it would "prove counterproductive" to the party's efforts going forward.
While the full report remains under lock and key, it was reported in February that the officials who crafted it believed that the Biden administration’s unwavering support of Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza cost then-Vice President Kamala Harris votes on Election Day and contributed to her loss to President Donald Trump.
When Martin appeared on Tuesday on the Pod Save America podcast, host Jon Favreau—a former speechwriter for President Barack Obama and a longtime booster of Democrats—refused to let the chairman off the hook for his excuses for not releasing what he has referred to as the “after-action review” of the election.
Favreau pointed to the fact that when Martin ran for the position after the party's gutting loss in 2024, he'd specifically criticized the party for refusing to release a similar report on Hillary Clinton's loss in 2016 and promised that "of course" a review of the party's 2024 loss "will be released" to the public.
"Why did you change your mind on that?" Favreau asked.
"What I said all along, even when I ran for this position, is that we were going to focus on the things that will help us win the upcoming election, right?" Martin said. "Making sure that we learn the right lessons that could help inform our victories. And that's what we've done."
Martin said it was more important to "keep our focus on those lessons" rather than "navel gazing and looking backwards, trying to relitigate 2024."
Favreau pointed to comments Martin made on Pod Save America in August, saying that the party was hard at work on the report “to give people who invested so much time, energy, and money a sense of what happened and why we lost.”
"What changed between August and December?" Favreau asked. "I understand there are lessons, but those are not the full report. Why not release the full report? What's in the report that you wouldn't want to publicize?"
Martin responded: "There's no smoking gun in the report, and I know that's what everyone's so eager to learn, the smoking gun... Guess what, Jon? There's no surprise in there."
Clearly unconvinced, Favreau interjected, "But if there's no smoking gun, why wouldn't you just release it then?"
Martin reiterated his previous point, that releasing the full report would be "looking backwards," and accused activist groups of being "obsessed" with the idea that there was a "smoking gun" buried within.
"Why did you spend the money going to 50 states, doing all these interviews, doing all this stuff, and doing this report in the first place if you weren't going to release the full results of it?" Favreau asked. "I don't get why just you and some of the senior [Democratic National Committee] people get to see it but not most of the DNC members who are state party chairs."
Favreau pointed to a call last week by more than a dozen DNC members to release the report, including Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) and North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton. He quoted Clayton, who asked, “Genuinely, what did you all find that we did not?”
Martin said the DNC had shared all of the "lessons" of the report with these members, but that they should stop focusing on the idea that it will contain "the one single reason that Kamala Harris lost the election or one single thing that we should have done differently that's going to help us win in the future."
The Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project has reported that behind closed doors, DNC officials who worked on the autopsy report have described Biden's policy toward Gaza as a "net-negative" in 2024, according to data the committee collected. DNC officials independently corroborated these findings to Axios in February.
While the results of any election are multifaceted, a poll commissioned by the IMEU Policy Project and conducted by YouGov in January found that when Biden 2020 voters cast their votes in 2024, 29% of them said the "most important issue" in deciding their vote was "ending Israel's violence in Gaza," a higher percentage than any other issue, including the economy.
Among Biden 2020 voters in battleground states who decided not to vote for Harris, 38% of them in Arizona said ending Israel's violence in Gaza was their top issue, while 32% said the same in Michigan and Wisconsin, and 19% did in Pennsylvania—all crucial states Harris lost by thin margins.
Polls of Democratic voters find that they overwhelmingly view Israel's military campaign in Gaza, which has killed at least 75,000 Palestinians, destroyed most of the territory's essential infrastructure, and left most of the population displaced, as a "genocide" and want the US to halt military support for Israel.
Most also say they want Democratic candidates to end their associations with pro-Israel lobbying groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which poured more than $100 million into the 2024 elections, including to influence Democratic primaries. The DNC also recently killed a resolution directly condemning AIPAC's influence, even as it continues to spend big against progressive candidates in this year's congressional primaries.
Journalist Adam Johnson remarked that while defending his decision not to release the autopsy on Tuesday, Martin appeared to find about "seven different ways of saying 'pro-Israel groups and donors don’t want us to release it because it’ll make obvious what a liability Israel is to the party' without saying it."
He criticized Martin's excuse that "looking backward" at past failures would be a pointless exercise.
"By definition, lessons and history and accountability require looking backward," he said. "This is how humans assess future actions as entropy moves the arrow of time in only one direction."
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‘Feckless’ Ken Martin Rebuked Over DNC Decision to Bury Autopsy of 2024 Election Disaster
"You can’t run as the party of democracy and transparency and then stick your own election autopsy in a drawer," said one critic.
Dec 18, 2025
The Democratic National Committee on Thursday drew strong criticism when it was revealed that the party's autopsy of its failures in the 2024 presidential election would not be publicly released.
According to the New York Times, DNC Chairman Ken Martin has decided against releasing the report because he "believes that looking back so publicly and painfully at the past would prove counterproductive for the party as it tries next year to take back power in Congress."
The decision to keep a lid on the report, however, is already sparking a backlash.
The New Republic's Greg Sargent argued in a Thursday piece that the decision by the DNC to bury the report "should unleash harsh criticism and recriminations" because it "could end up protecting key actors inside the party from accountability over the blown but winnable contest."
Sargent then pointed the finger at Future Forward, a super PAC that he said has earned a reputation for blowing large sums of money on ineffective television ads.
"Well before Election Day, the PAC came under harsh criticism from some Democrats who argued that it hadn’t spent sufficient money earlier in the campaign on ads attacking Trump," Sargent wrote. "Other Democrats charged that Future Forward’s ad-testing model and addiction to traditional TV ads led to anodyne communications and that its flawed theory of politics caused it to refrain from sufficiently targeting Trump, letting him avoid blame for his first-term disasters on Covid-19 and the economy."
Jeff Hauser, founder and executive director of the Revolving Door Project, told Common Dreams that Martin's decision to bury the report was part of a broader pattern of a lack of accountability for US elites, an issue that he said is becoming more important" as America gets less and less equal."
"Ken Martin seems determined to become the Merrick Garland of DNC Chairs," added Hauser, "a feckless amiable sort unwilling to take on the powerful people who scream out for stringent accountability. Democrats ought to re-center their entire party around holding elites, be they from Big Tech, the Democratic Party establishment, Big Oil, or Trump's kleptocratic regime, accountable."
Rotimi Adeoye, a columnist for MS Now and former communications strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union, also accused party insiders of trying to protect elites at the expense of rebuilding public trust with voters.
"This is also happening as Congressional Dems sit at a -55 net approval," he argued on X. "If your numbers are that bad and your response is to bury the autopsy, you’re basically telling voters the insiders get protection while the base gets lectures."
Adeoye added that "you can’t run as the party of democracy and transparency and then stick your own election autopsy in a drawer," and said that "if the DNC thinks the report would 'hurt the party,' that means the problems are real and political, not analytical—and that’s exactly why people want to read it."
Journalist Yashar Ali, meanwhile, sent out a message on Bluesky encouraging DNC staffers who have access to the report to let him publish it.
"If you have access to this DNC report, please send it to me," he wrote. "I will protect your anonymity."
While the DNC isn't releasing its own report documenting party failures in 2024, the progressive advocacy group RootsAction last week published an autopsy written by journalist Christopher D. Cook, who argued that former Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign made a major mistake by trying to court so-called moderate Republican voters and corporate donors instead of focusing on the struggles of working-class Americans.
"This was a preventable disaster," Cook said, "but Harris and the Democratic Party leadership prioritized the agendas of corporate donors and gambled on a centrist path, while largely abandoning working-class, young, and progressive voters."
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Grassroots Dems Pushing DNC to Adopt Ranked-Choice Voting After Mamdani's Win
One pollster argued that ranked-choice "gives a better chance to new faces, outsider candidates, people with grassroots movements, people who run positive campaigns, people who have something new to offer."
Nov 24, 2025
Progressives are hopeful that a new push for ranked-choice voting could allow for more primary races in which candidates who accurately reflect the priorities of the party’s voters rise to the top.
Ranked-choice voting (RCV), which lets voters rank candidates in order of preference rather than voting for a single one, was instrumental in the unexpected triumph of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in this summer’s Democratic primary.
Axios reported Monday that Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Ken Martin has recently met with advocates seeking to implement RCV in the party's 2028 presidential primary.
Among them were reportedly Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), pollster Celinda Lake, organizers with the nonprofit FairVote Action, and several other figures in the Democratic Party.
Raskin is a long-time advocate for ranked-choice voting. In 2019, leading up to what would be a chaotic and crowded 2020 primary, he wrote in Common Dreams, along with political organizers Adam Eichen and Rob Richie, that:
RCV is the best way to allow greater voter choice without wasted votes and unrepresentative winners...
It will help any party gain stronger nominees and provide more clarity about what voters really want going into conventions. Because voters’ backup choices matter, candidates with RCV tend to run more positive campaigns, seek common ground, and respect their opponents’ supporters.
Notably, that scenario is exactly what played out in New York City’s Democratic primary. City Comptroller Brad Lander, another progressive mayoral candidate, was able to encourage his voters to rank the more popular Mamdani without fear of splitting the votes and helping their centrist opponents.
At a time when Democratic voters have historically low levels of trust in their party's leaders, Lake told Axios that "[RCV] gives a better chance to new faces, outsider candidates, people with grassroots movements, people who run positive campaigns, people who have something new to offer. It really meets the moment."
New York City is the highest-profile practitioner of RCV, which it adopted in 2019 for party primaries. But others include Maine and Alaska, as well as cities like San Francisco and Minneapolis.
Republicans have aggressively sought to outlaw ranked-choice voting in states where they have legislative control. In 2024, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Kentucky all passed bills to outlaw RCV—bans that may hinder its implementation as a new nationwide system, even in Democratic primaries.
Meanwhile, in Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, and Oregon, voters rejected RCV during last year's elections following industry-backed pushes against it.
In a letter to the editor of the Anchorage Daily News on Sunday, a reader pointed out that President Donald Trump's calls for any Indiana lawmakers who vote against redistricting the state in the GOP's favor to be "PRIMARIED" was evidence of why RCV "is important for protecting our democratic process."
“In ranked-choice voting, no one person, nor small group of people, can keep a candidate in their party off the final ballot because they don’t agree with a particular partisan attitude,” he wrote.
In order for the DNC to implement ranked-choice voting, it would need support from its Rules and Bylaws Committee, whose members are appointed by Martin. It would also need majority support from the DNC's roughly 450 members, which include state party leaders and others elected by states. Axios reported that enthusiasm among members is mixed.
Progressive commentators have expressed excitement at the idea: "This would be a fantastic pro-democracy stance," wrote the left-wing Breaking Points co-host Krystal Ball on social media.
But others doubted that party powerbrokers, who worked behind the scenes to stop the insurgent campaigns of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2016 and 2020, would ever implement a reform that would cede so much power to outsider candidates.
“This is a great idea,” said Sanders’ 2020 press secretary, Briahna Joy Gray. “They won’t do it.”
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Why the Debate at the DNC Was a Victory for Palestinian Rights
Chair Martin’s decision to withdraw his resolution and create a task force to continue the conversation within the party was a recognition of the reality that the status quo has become unacceptable and untenable.
Sep 02, 2025
While some supporters of Palestinian rights saw the developments at last week’s meeting of the Democratic National Committee as a defeat, it was, in fact, a victory. Here is what happened at the meeting and why I feel that progress was made:
During the party’s Resolutions Committee two separate resolutions were debated. While both called for an immediate ceasefire and unimpeded humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza, one, submitted by young Democrats, went further, condemning Israeli actions in Gaza and calling for a suspension of US arms sales to Israel and US recognition of Palestinian statehood. In response to this resolution, the party’s establishment submitted an alternative that included no such criticism of Israeli policies or any mention of stopping US arms shipments to Israel.
There was intense lobbying for and against both efforts, with pro-Israel groups and some elected officials and party donors warning members of the committee that passing the resolution critical of Israel would divide the Democratic Party, costing it contributions and victories in the midterm elections. On the other side, committee members each reported receiving upward of 5,000 emails or phone calls from young Democrats and progressive activists urging them to vote for the resolution demanding an end to US weapons to Israel.
As expected, the establishment resolution won, and the young Democrats’ effort lost. But immediately after the vote, the Democratic Party’s chair, Ken Martin, after speaking with the most critical resolution’s sponsors, rose to announce that he was asking that, in the name of party unity, his resolution be withdrawn and not presented to the entire Democratic National Committee for their acceptance. He further pledged to create a task force of stakeholders in this debate to continue this conversation and find solutions that can be brought back to the party for consideration.
Some advocates, on both sides of this debate, were disappointed. On the pro-Israel side, Martin was derided for his weakness in “surrendering to the far left,” while some supporters of Palestinian rights said that the way the issue was handled would only delay Israel’s day of reckoning, cost more Palestinian lives, and further alienate young voters from the Democratic Party.
Both are wrong. Martin’s decision was politically thoughtful, and in reality, advocates for a change in US policy toward Israel won a significant victory. Before explaining why this is so, one important fact must be understood: The Democratic National Committee is not a legislative body. It doesn’t make policy. Policy is made by Congress and the White House. Even if the committee had passed a resolution calling for ending arms sales to Israel, nothing would have happened. What the party can do is reflect where Democrats stand on critical issues facing the country and help to move forward the discussion of these matters. This is exactly what the resolution critical of Israel had forced onto the agenda last week.
What also must be considered is while the debate over these resolutions was only the fourth time that any such discussion of the Palestinian issue has occurred at an official party meeting during the past four decades, it was the first time the discussion wasn’t in response to a presidential candidate. This debate was a grassroots-led effort.
While pro-Israel groups still have some sway, their clout has been diminished.
In 1984 and 1988, I was able to represent the Jesse Jackson campaign in introducing platform planks calling for Palestinian rights. The issue wasn’t introduced again in a party gathering until 2016, when representing the Bernie Sanders campaign, we again brought forward a platform resolution on Palestine. In all of those previous instances, we lost and no one in the party establishment cared to find a way to accommodate our concerns. In fact, in the wake of the defeat of our 1988 resolution calling for “mutual recognition, territorial compromise, and self-determination for both Israelis and Palestinians,” I was asked to vacate my post on the Democratic National Committee because I was told that the presence of a pro-Palestinian advocate would be a liability for the party!
This year’s outcome was clearly different, and it is due to the fact that public opinion has dramatically changed. And while pro-Israel groups still have some sway, their clout has been diminished. Polls show that Democrats are deeply offended by Israel’s actions. They are far more sympathetic to Palestinians and want an end to US military and political support for Israel, often by margins of between 7 or 10 to 1. And as we approach the 2026 midterm elections, the issues of support for Palestinians and ending arms sales to Israel have become litmus tests for Democratic senators and members of Congress.
Given this, Chair Martin’s decision to withdraw his resolution and create a task force to continue the conversation within the party was a recognition of the shifting tides within the party and the reality that the status quo has become unacceptable and untenable. Supporters of Palestinian rights should understand that this was a victory and an important step forward in the long struggle for justice.
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Democratic Voters Are Sick of Funding Israel. Will the Leaders Listen?
It’s necessary for us to continue making the case for the Democratic Party to abandon the unelected donor class and become a party of the working class that promotes peace and justice at home and abroad.
Aug 29, 2025
After the shock upset of the 2024 election, Democrats asked themselves how they could have possibly lost what should have been a landslide victory over Trump. There were long discussions on bringing back young voters, reconnecting with the working class, and reassessing the party’s relationship with groups like American Israel Public Affairs Committee that don’t align with the voting base.
It seems, however, the party establishment has not decided to change its strategy in any way, continuing on a course that will allow the Republicans to run rampant in dismantling what little of democracy and social safety nets this country had.
The trouble is that the leadership of the Democratic Party is captured by a donor class whose values do not align with the voters. As a result, when the voters are divided 90-10 on an issue, the leadership often will side with the 10.
A new Quinnipiac survey found that an overwhelming majority of 77% of Democrats have come to the conclusion that Israel is committing the crime of genocide, but yet still only a small fraction of elected Democrats have openly acknowledged that reality.
There are Democrats who are taking the side of the voters by opposing Israel’s genocide while taking an aggressive approach to US President Donald Trump, but instead of being embraced by party leadership, they are being shut out.
When House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), the No. 2 Democrat in the House, was attending an event at a Quaker Meeting House in her district, she was confronted by myself and other constituents on her complicity in Israel’s genocide. In this conversation, she acknowledged that the politics of Israel and Palestine have changed and used the term genocide in the context of Gaza. But then a few days later, likely under pressure from AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups, she issued a statement saying “I want to be clear that I am not accusing Israel of genocide.”
Despite coming from one of the country’s most progressive districts, she has an abysmally conservative record on Palestine. Clark has taken over $700,000 from pro-Israel groups like AIPAC, Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI), and J-Street, making the Israel lobby her largest source of campaign money. Even though she has joined other Democrats in expressing how “horrified” they are about the starvation in Gaza, she still will not commit to taking a stance against arming the nation responsible for the famine.
Clark’s cowardice in the face of pressure from big donors at the expense of constituents is emblematic of Democratic leaders. Figures like Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who allowed the Republicans to move forward with their austerity budget, do not have the courage or the will to lead the Democratic Party in the fight against fascism.
This cowardice became apparent again recently in the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) reaction when a young member of the committee introduced a resolution before party leadership to call for an end of military aid to Israel. Groups like AIPAC and DMFI quickly mobilized in opposition to the bill and were successful shutting it down with support from DNC chair Ken Martin. This being despite a recent poll finding that 75% of Democrats oppose sending military aid to Israel and another that only 8% approve of Israel’s action in Gaza.
There are Democrats who are taking the side of the voters by opposing Israel’s genocide while taking an aggressive approach to US President Donald Trump, but instead of being embraced by party leadership, they are being shut out.
Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral primary with a strong focus on issues of affordability, promising to freeze the rent, make buses fast and free, and implement universal childcare. These policies, along with Mamdani’s belief in Palestinian human rights, propelled him to victory over former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in spite of opposition from corporations like DoorDash, the real estate lobby, and pro-Israel groups. Even though Mamdani has won theratic primary, securing the party’s nomination, many New York Democrats were slow to or yet to endorse him.
We are now seeing a similar scenario play out in Minneapolis where democratic socialist Omar Fateh mayoral candidate had his endorsement from Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer Labor Party undemocratically revoked as a result of the work of a few party insiders.
Despite the efforts to silence them from the establishment, Mamdani holds a comfortable lead in the general election and Fateh is still a viable challenger to incumbent centrist Democrat Jacob Frey.
Mamdani and Fateh are now joined by a roster of leftist challengers running for Congress in 2026 against both corrupt Democrats and Republicans. Candidates like Maine’s Graham Platner and Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed have both taken a principled stance against Israel’s genocide and promoted other popular policies like Medicare for all where again the party establishment has chosen the donors over the voters.
As 2026 approaches and pundits are already discussing who should run for president in 2028, it’s necessary for us to continue making the case for the Democratic Party to abandon the unelected donor class and become a party of the working class that promotes peace and justice at home and abroad. If not, the party will repeat the same mistakes it made in 2024, clearing the way for an uninterrupted fascist takeover.
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