After a party loses an election, it usually benefits from having an analysis of the reasons for its failure and laying out a path for the future. Of course, whether that path makes any sense depends on whether the reasons given for the failure are based on reality. After delaying and waffling for the longest time, the Democratic Party finally released its so-called ‘autopsy‘ and it was so bad that even the party chairman has tried to distance himself from it.

Richard Eskow gives a scathing review of the report.

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.” 
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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.

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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.

Eskow recommends that instead of wasting one’s time on the DNC report, one read instead the report put out by the group RootsAction. Its Executive Summary states the five main reasons for the party’s failure.

• 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.

This report examines the voluminous evidence bolstering these conclusions. We document the many ways in which the Harris campaign and Democratic Party leadership failed to meet the moment and gravely miscalculated both what and who the election hinged on.

It then outlines a path forward.

Rising majorities of Democrats and independent voters are clamoring for progressive, economic populist candidates and policies. In addition to recent progressive wins, massive crowds are clamoring for “Fighting Oligarchy” rallies led by Senator Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Economic populist candidates and ballot measures are succeeding (or, at minimum, significantly beating the partisan spread) in rural and swing districts across America. The Democratic Party needs to listen to what voters have repeatedly told them, and change course. It’s time for the Democratic Party to recover and revive its most populist roots, and put the needs (and votes) of working-class and middle-class people first.
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• Commit to economic populist policies that inspire and benefit working-class people, including: Enhanced Medicare for All single-payer healthcare; raising the federal minimum wage; robust union protections; expanded job creation and funding to help manual and manufacturing workers when industries and companies go under; aggressive anti-trust enforcement to break corporate monopolies; and significantly increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations.
• Commit to significantly limiting and curtailing corporate campaign contributions and PACs, and mounting an aggressive challenge to Citizens United and corporate money in politics.
• Democrats should officially reject AIPAC and its stranglehold over the party and its foreign policy. Supporting Israel even amid its war crimes and horrific assault on Gazans was both morally indefensible and politically suicidal. Younger generations of voters and activists, the future of the Democratic Party, have made that abundantly clear.

The Democratic party establishment is captive to the big money interests and the Israel lobby, even if those entities actually support Republicans. They contribute to the party establishment purely to keep them captive and prevent them from taking on more populist measures. They need to go.