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Kamala Harris Reportedly Not Opposed to Releasing DNC's Secret 2024 Autopsy
"Saying so privately to some big donors is very different than publicly calling for transparency from the DNC, which is badly needed," said Norman Solomon of RootsAction, which has led calls for the release.
May 07, 2026
Even former Vice President Kamala Harris reportedly "has no problem with a public airing" of the Democratic National Committee's internal "autopsy" report on her 2024 loss to Republican President Donald Trump—which the DNC has continued to conceal, despite mounting demands for transparency.
Harris' position was reported Thursday by NBC News, which noted that "while she indicated to donors that she had no issue with releasing it, Harris has not discussed the postmortem with DNC Chairman Ken Martin and did not know about his decision to keep it under wraps until it happened."
NBC cited "a person who has heard the conversations," one of multiple sources journalists Jonathan Allen and Natasha Korecki spoke with for their broader report exploring "turmoil over the Democratic Party’s future" and Harris' consideration of a 2028 run.
For months, Martin has resisted pressure to release the autopsy—which, as Axios revealed in February, found that the Biden administration's support for Israel's genocidal assault on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip contributed to Harris' defeat.
Citing a "person close to Harris," NBC also reported Thursday that the former VP "is signaling privately that she has more to say about the Middle East now that she is freed from the Biden White House policy," and "she is likely to do so after the midterm elections," either "from the perspective of a party elder or from the perspective of a candidate seeking votes."
While touring the country for the book she wrote after her loss, Harris has publicly acknowledged that she is weighing another White House run. Though the 2028 election is two and a half years away, she has led early polling. However, the party's potential primary field is incredibly crowded, featuring dozens of current or former governors and members of Congress.
Potential contenders include governors from the Trump 2.0 era—such as Gavin Newsom of California, JB Pritzker of Illinois, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan—as well as leading progressive voices in Congress, such as Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
Norman Solomon, national director of RootsAction, which has spearheaded calls for publishing the full postmortem, wrote in a recent opinion piece for Common Dreams that "Martin's concealment of the autopsy report puts a thumb on the scale for one candidate: Kamala Harris."
Solomon highlighted the DNC's reported conclusion about the role of the Gaza genocide in the election result, and suggested that "renewed attention to the Harris 2024 finances would also be unwelcome."
In response to Harris' reported remarks to donors, Solomon said Thursday that "more than four months have passed since Martin announced he was reneging on his promise to release the autopsy.
"But Harris still hasn't made any public statement that she believes it should be released," he added. "Saying so privately to some big donors is very different than publicly calling for transparency from the DNC, which is badly needed."
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I Detest Billionaires: My Journey to Supporting One for Governor of California
Make no mistake about it: Corporate lobbyists are horrified that Tom Steyer might become California’s governor. Despite myself, he may just be the class traitor we've been waiting for.
May 04, 2026
As a progressive who watches too much television, when I see a Democratic candidate dominating the TV air war with ubiquitous campaign ads, I usually know that’s a Democrat I should oppose—the one being lavishly funded by wealthy corporate interests. And the ads are usually vapid, empty.
Living in California these past months, I’ve had to adjust my normal mindset. Because the Democrat running for governor who was dominating the airwaves had put out one substantive ad after another—calling for taxing the wealthy, breaking up utility monopolies, standing up to Big Oil. Each ad could have been put out by Bernie Sanders. Like the ad featuring Rep. Ro Khanna about taking on the “big insurance companies” to pass universal “single-payer healthcare” for California.
Or the candidate’s video message denouncing AIPAC (“they’re attacking progressive Democrats every chance they get”) and the Democratic Party establishment for “not talking more forcefully” against the Iran war.
The candidate putting out all these wonderfully progressive ads is billionaire Tom Steyer, a former hedge fund manager turned environmental advocate, now self-funding his campaign to the tune of $130 million. So far.
Let me be clear: I generally loathe billionaires and hedge-funders and everyone in the financial speculation elite. I remain skeptical that someone as wealthy as Steyer who operated at the heights of amoral financialized capitalism can deeply understand and fight for working-class interests.
If Steyer is elected, will he prove to be the effective “class traitor” that most Californians need him to be—a governor who stands up to corporate greed and power?
So I was in a quandary. A month ago, after seeing Steyer’s anti-AIPAC video attacking Democratic leaders for failing to “forcefully” oppose Trump’s war, I started an intense dialogue with progressives across California, including journalists, experienced activists, organizational leaders. Almost all—somewhat surprisingly or confusedly or embarrassingly—were arriving at the same conclusion: the billionaire, Tom Steyer, is the best choice for governor.
Many had attended and been impressed by one of Steyer’s town hall forums across the state, where his introductory remarks were short while the audience Q&A went long. I started finding online memes from an activist I respect, Amar Shergill, a Steyer-supporter who formerly chaired the California Democratic Party’s Progressive Caucus—including his charts comparing the Democratic field.
Like in other Democratic one-party states, pro-corporate corruption in California’s state capital is rampant, which is why California—with a population almost as large as Canada’s—lacks universal healthcare coverage. Most Democrats in office say they support it, but profiteering insurance interests fund their campaigns. A bill to move California toward government-provided single-payer health insurance that would replace private insurance sailed through the Democrat-led state legislature in both 2006 and 2008, when it was well-known that GOP Gov. Arnold Scwharzenegger would veto the measure. Both times. Schwarzenegger called it “socialized medicine.”
But a funny thing has happened in the California legislature ever since Democrats took the governor’s office in 2011, first Jerry Brown and then Gavin Newsom: A single-payer healthcare bill never made it to their desks. In some years, thanks to medical industry lobbyists, the bill didn’t even get out of committee.
Make no mistake about it: Corporate lobbyists are horrified that Tom Steyer might become California’s governor. To stop Steyer, corporate forces and their allies in the Democratic establishment have moved from now-disgraced Rep. Eric Swalwell to Xavier Becerra, former US Secretary of Health and Human Services. Becerra, who won praise from the right-wing Murdoch press for pocketing the maximum campaign donation from Chevron, is now bending to the will of private interests on healthcare, according to KQED public radio.
Steyer’s unequivocal support of CalCare universal health coverage is one of the reasons he’s endorsed by Rep. Ro Khanna and the California Nurses Association (CNA), and why RootsAction (which I co-founded) came out in support last week.
One dividing-line issue among Democratic candidates is the California Billionaire Tax Act—a ballot initiative launched by SEIU-United Healthcare Workers that would impose a one-time emergency tax on the state’s 200 richest individuals to bolster healthcare. It’s supported by Steyer, Khanna, Bernie Sanders and opposed by Gov. Newsom and billionaire friends like Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt of Google. (As a funder/activist, Steyer used statewide ballot initiatives to win reforms, including Prop 39 in 2012 that closed a corporate tax loophole to fund green jobs and energy-efficiency in schools.)
The TV air war has taken a bizarre turn. While Steyer’s ads dominated for many weeks, he is now facing a barrage of negative ads funded by some of California’s powerful corporate interests straight-facedly accusing him of being a corporatist—of profiting from past investments his hedge fund had made in fossil fuels and private prisons. We know who’s funding the attacks on Steyer thanks to California’s DISCLOSE Act, which requires that the top funders of campaign ads be listed in the bottom third of the TV screen.
Even though California has a strongly-Democratic electorate, it’s likely that only one of the half-dozen serious Democratic gubernatorial aspirants will make it through the June “jungle primary” into November’s general election to face a Republican—probably Steve Hilton, a former Fox News contributor endorsed by Trump.
If Steyer is elected, will he prove to be the effective “class traitor” that most Californians need him to be—a governor who stands up to corporate greed and power? Though not as rich as Steyer, President Franklin Roosevelt certainly provides a role model as someone willing to fight “the economic royalists” he knew so well in order to uplift working people.
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'The Truth Is Better Than Continuing to Lose': Petition Demands DNC Release Autopsy of 2024 Defeat
"We who are prudent would like to know what mistakes were made that thrust us into this nightmare we are living."
Apr 23, 2026
The Democratic National Committee is still refusing to release its internal "autopsy" report about Democrats' defeat in the 2024 election, but at least one progressive advocacy group isn't letting party leaders off the hook.
RootsAction has organized a letter writing campaign encouraging supporters to email the DNC demanding release of its analysis of how Democrats in 2024 lost the presidential election to twice-impeached convicted felon Donald Trump.
The group has put together an editable template letter for supporters to use, and it makes reference to a February report from Axios claiming that the DNC found that the Biden administration's support for Israel during its years-long assault on Gaza cost Vice President Kamala Harris votes among young people and progressive voters.
"The truth is not just embarrassing but also inconvenient to those who want to persist in making the same mistake, in arming Israel, in shifting more and more of our resources into wars that devastate millions of lives," the letter states. “But the truth is better than continuing to lose. It would be hard not to blame future defeats on your refusal to allow examination of past defeats."
Norman Solomon, national director of RootsAction, noted that the DNC "spent hundreds of thousands of dollars at least doing interviews in 50 states," to conduct its autopsy, but has nonetheless decided it won't "tell the millions of people who donated money to the Democratic Party candidates in the last few years" what it learned from that internal review.
RootsAction senior strategist India Walton said it was political malpractice for the DNC to continue suppressing the report.
"We who are prudent would like to know what mistakes were made that thrust us into this nightmare we are living," she said. "Now is not a time for saving face. Releasing the autopsy will help us understand what voters really want heading into midterms and the next presidential election. That’s the least we deserve."
RootsAction last year released its own autopsy of the 2024 election, which found that the Biden administration's support for Israel hurt it among voters, while also blaming the party's strategy of courting corporate donors instead of organizing working-class voters who shifted to Trump.
"This was a preventable disaster," said journalist Christopher Cook, who authored the report, "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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