Kamala Harris (archive photo)
TOI correspondent from Washington: After months of secrecy, recriminations, leaks and intra-party paranoia, the Democratic Party on Thursday released the long-awaited autopsy of the disastrous 2024 presidential campaign that resulted in Kamala Harris losing the election to Donald Trump, turning the autopsy into another disaster.
The 192-page review, written primarily by Democratic strategist Paul Rivera, was intended to explain how Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election to Trump despite massive fundraising, a late surge of enthusiasm after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, and widespread Democratic warnings that higher MAGA posed an existential threat to American democracy. Instead, the report revealed a party that remains deeply divided over exactly what went wrong.The report paints a picture of a Democratic Party disconnected from working-class voters, weak on economic messaging, culturally outdated, and organizationally complacent. She says Democrats have lost credibility on immigration, public safety and inflation while Republicans have successfully painted Harris as an ineffective steward of the Biden administration.However, what may be most surprising is not what the autopsy says, but rather what it curiously avoids saying.
The report notably avoids a sustained examination of Biden’s disastrous decision to seek reelection despite widespread voter concerns about his age and stamina — concerns that Democrats publicly dismissed until his disastrous debate performance forced him to withdraw. Nor does it seriously scrutinize the messy process that elevated Harris to the nomination without a competitive primary after Biden stepped down in July 2024.This omission has angered many Democrats who believe the party establishment is still protecting prominent figures like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer from accountability.The report also barely touches on another politically explosive issue: divisions within the party over US support for Israel’s war in Gaza, a conflict that has alienated many young and progressive voters. Critics immediately noted that the nearly 200-page document about the Democrats’ collapse managed to avoid even mentioning “Gaza” or “Palestine” in any meaningful way.The results themselves are often as dramatic a revelation as they are a set of painful truths that Democrats spent two years arguing about on podcasts, cable television and in excruciating town hall conversations. The report finds that Democrats have failed to connect with Latino voters, men, rural Americans and younger voters. The party has remained too reliant on traditional media and too disconnected from the emerging digital ecosystems dominated by MAGA Republicans.
She says the Trump campaign learned more from Barack Obama’s 2008 organizational revolution than the Democrats did.The autopsy also criticizes Democratic spending practices, suggesting that the Harris campaign spent staggering amounts of money with questionable efficiency. Harris raised nearly $1 billion in a compact 107-day campaign, but failed to overcome voter dissatisfaction with the economy, immigration and perceptions of elite disconnect.But the most extraordinary feature of this release is the Democratic National Committee’s disclaimer attached to the document. Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin virtually denied the report as it was published, while acknowledging that the document was incomplete, unpolished and lacking in adequate sources. He admitted, saying: “I am not proud of this product,” stressing at the same time that transparency requires its launch anyway.The debacle highlights the broader dilemma facing the Democratic Party heading into 2028. On the one hand are establishment figures who say Democrats simply need clearer messaging and better organizing against an increasingly unpopular Trump administration. On the other hand, there are progressives and young activists who believe the party suffers from something deeper: a leadership culture that is risk-averse, consultant-driven, over-management, and afraid of real ideological conflict.Many Democrats privately acknowledge that Harris faced almost impossible circumstances after belatedly inheriting the nomination. The result was a campaign that often seemed trapped between defending Biden’s record and promising generational change, an impossible political yoga pose.For now, Democrats are trying to focus on the 2026 midterms, where Trump’s polarizing presidency may once again help consolidate anti-Republican votes. But the autopsy suggests the party still doesn’t have a definitive answer to the biggest question that has haunted it since 2024: whether Trump’s win was just an aberration — or evidence that Democrats have fundamentally lost touch with large swaths of the American electorate.