As is their special talent, Democrats fumbled not just the 2024 national election, but also the political autopsy of mistakes made by party officials that led to their rejection by so many voters. Democratic National Commission Chair Ken Martin, who commissioned the after-action report, now claims that the clearly pre-publication draft of what he asked for 'wasn't ready for primetime.' Well, of course it wasn't; whole sections, including the executive summary, had yet to be added. But the document's real 'flaws' appear to be highlighting the mistakes of a political party that thought it could ride to victory while spurning men, rural voters, effective communications strategies and anybody uninfected by identity politics. That's just a bit more embarrassment than party leaders can swallow.
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Report Highlights Democratic Failings
'I was elected Chair of the Democratic National Committee three months after one of the most painful and consequential election losses for Democrats in modern history. It was a punch to the gut, and people were pissed off,' Martin noted in a statement upon the reluctant release of the draft report, which the party commissioned and then sat on until CNN acquired and threatened to publish a copy.
A 'painful and consequential' election loss it certainly was, but the enforced errors were painfully obvious to anybody paying attention. In 2024, the incumbent president and presumed candidate for reelection was publicly revealed as a senile sock puppet for a 'politburo' of backroom hacks. Vice President Kamala Harris, about whom many Americans had serious doubts, was anointed as his successor without any input from party members — in the process, kneecapping arguments that ultimately victorious Republican candidate Donald Trump posed a threat to democracy.
That the reasons for the rough candidate transition from Joe Biden to Harris are barely mentioned underlines the fact that the report, prepared by political consultant Paul Rivera, is not exactly a brutal takedown of Democratic flaws. But it does call out some major failings.
Loss of Ground Across All Levels
In the 16 years since Barack Obama won a landslide in the 2008 presidential election, 'Democrats have lost ground at every level of government,' the report points out. Even where Democrats win contested races, 'some of these elections were tighter than Democrats should be comfortable with' and 'many of our critical Democratic wins can be attributed to negative partisanship — where Republicans have nominated deeply flawed candidates' creating situations where the GOP threw away races.
Part of the problem is that 'Harris wrote off rural America, assuming urban/suburban margins would compensate.' But that meant giving up on millions of votes and creating an insurmountable barrier to victory. 'You can't lose rural areas by overwhelming margins and make it up elsewhere when rural voters are a significant share of the electorate.'
Also, the report notes, 'the Harris campaign appears to have focused heavily on women' and better results among male voters for other Democrats 'suggests the national campaign had a specific problem with male voters.' Men must be directly engaged, not taken for granted or written off, the report adds.
