An autopsy is something that’s conducted to determine the cause of death. And death it was. And death it still is. I feel the pain of Republicans and conservatives who find Trump abhorrent, both personally and politically. To the extent I shared those feelings toward the Democratic Party, the “autopsy” released by Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin, under extreme pressure after he sought to conceal it due to the shame it would reveal about the handling of the 2024 presidential campaign and the party’s abject inability to face its failings, only deepened and confirmed my worst fears.
But the “autopsy” is now out in the open and confirms, in its stunning incompetence, the worst fears of the Democratic Party.
The Democratic National Committee on Thursday released a nearly 200-page draft of an internal autopsy of what went wrong in the 2024 campaign, ending months of speculation that had created an embarrassing public spectacle for the party as it seeks to regain control of Congress.
The draft report places blame for former Vice President Kamala Harris’s defeat partly on former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s political operation, arguing that it did not position her for success in the race after Mr. Biden dropped out. It also critiques the Harris campaign for failing to distance itself from Mr. Biden, and for not producing an effective strategy to make a dent in Donald J. Trump’s rising approval ratings.
Sure,* Biden’s presidency was deeply flawed, and his insistence on running given his clear dotage was absurd. As for Harris, she had an opportunity daily to be a person who said something, stood for something, would do something, but chose instead to spew vapid, nonresponsive talking points that would never cause anyone to want to vote for her. Her sole virtue was that she wasn’t Trump, but in a nation sick of the woke takeover, that wasn’t nearly good enough.
What the “autopsy” revealed was that the Democrats refused to come to grips with the fact that it was no longer a liberal party, patriotic to the nation, supportive of the Constitution and protective of the rights of all Americans, not just its flavor of the moment marginalized cohort.
The document itself was widely mocked. Atop each page was a bright red disclaimer that the D.N.C. “was not provided with the underlying sourcing, interviews, or supporting data for many of the assertions contained herein.” A page with the title “Executive Summary” was blank except for a note in red reading: “This section was not provided by author.”
Particular facts included in the version that the committee released were highlighted in yellow and annotated as either unverified and inaccurate. There was no list of who was interviewed, no transcriptions and no notes, which made determining the veracity of the draft all but impossible, said a person familiar with the process.
This critique, sharp though it may be, is one of process, not substance. If it had been better annotated, and note, name and transcriptions of interviews provided, would it have done any more than confirm the bias of those with their hands of the wheel of the ship? One complaint since the Obama administration is that the party failed to bring in younger people to take the wheel as the geriatrics aged out.
But age alone, while important for the purposes of continuity and longevity, was never enough. Progressives were young, passionate and absolutely wrong. And the olds, who refused to let go of the wheel even as their decrepit, arthritic hands could no longer hold it firm, lacked the courage to tell the loud, purple-haired children to grow up and get their heads of their collective childish butts.
The irony today is that while Trump’s approval rating is lower now than it was following January 6th, a day that should live in infamy unless Trump gets his way, the approval rating of the Democratic Party is even worse. And this autopsy shows that the Democrats have no clue why and no capacity to right the ship.
As I said to Howl on the twitters,
I would have voted for a dead skunk rather than Trump. But that doesn’t mean I want to vote for a dead skunk.
My apologies to skunks.
In the coming midterm election, turning Congress Democratic serves the extremely important purpose of splitting the government, with the Trumpians in control of the Executive Branch and the Democrats in control of the Legislative Branch. Divided government is almost certainly a guarantee of paralysis, which used to be considered a bad thing. No more. Under the current administration, paralysis is the best we can hope for.
Trump has proven to be as bad, nay worse, than anyone imagined after his first term, in which his ignorance of law and governance and incompetence was his best feature. This time, Trump has surrounded himself with more effective and shameless sycophants and scoundrels, who won’t let law or governance get in their way. This corruption must be stopped, and a Democratic Congress might show the mettle to do something about it. But as for a party anyone wants to vote for because they provide a vision of the future America desires, the autopsy says it all. It’s dead and they have no clue how to resurrect it.
*Anyone doubting my views throughout the Biden administration or the Harris campaign is welcome to look back at my posts throughout that time period. One of the benefits of having a blog is that your thoughts at the time are available for all to see.
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I skimmed the thing. It was written like a freshman college student trying to make themselves look smarter than they were.
Pretentious, errors of fact, overwritten, some spelling errors, missing evidence, and so on.
In fairness, it was written by Democratic strategist and consultant Paul Rivera and reads like it started out like it was for internal or personal use only and he got tired of it before it was finished.
However, it hit several points the party needs to address.
-Democrats need to rebuild support with working-class voters.
-The party should focus more on a clear economic message.
-Democrats relied too heavily on urban/suburban coalition politics while neglecting rural and swing-region organizing.
-They need stronger year-round organizing and state-party investment.
-Democrats should stop assuming anti-Trump messaging alone is enough.
It also said the Biden White House did not adequately prepare or position Kamala Harris to become the nominee after Joe Biden exited the race.
I think it will take more than addressing the above for the Democrats to become a viable party again. They need to run someone people can vote for. Both times Trump got elected, a large part of the voters cast ballots for him because “It was anybody but Hillary/Harris.”
Conclusions like “Democrats need to rebuild support with working-class voters” are worthless without the specifics of how they plan to do so. While the Dems should obviously has a “clear economic message,” what would the message be? It’s just conclusory nonsense without the details.
That was the whole problem with the paper. It identified some major problems but didn’t give any answers.
Until the leadership cures it’s recital cranial inversion problem it will continue to lose voters.
I haven’t read it, but did a few searches. For “racis*” and “sexis*”. No hits. These searches would have caught even a single mention of racism, sexism, racist, sexist. Nothing. Running a non-white non-male against a white guy like Trump, in America even now, might have just *possibly* had an effect?! “Transg*” gave only one hit mentioning the attack ad, without any further analysis or considering the possibility that paying for transgender care for convicts, when many non-convict Americans have medical care problems, is not necessarily popular. Nothing about “prison” or “convict” except in relation to Trump.
I mean, is it so hard to understand, or at least consider the possibility, that Kamala Harris was a seriously bad candidate to run against Trump?! How is it an autopsy if it ignored one of the major, if not the major, potential causes of death?!
“Effective”?
(Insert “Princess Bride” quote here.)
Otherwise, I completely agree and appreciate the skunk quote (apologies if that’s too close to a tummy rub).
OTBS, his petty “revenge tour” has effectively cost the GOP their majority in the Senate. This should make the next six months especially frustrating for Il Douche.
The schadenfreude is exquisite.
They took 200 pages to say that as a party they have nothing to offer?
It was “Hillary deserves it, don’t compete with Hillary” and “Don’t compete with Kamala, there isn’t time.” Which led to boring campaigns. Competitive campaigns are more interesting, and educate voters about options.
The significance is that the document comes from inside the machine. Otherwise it doesn’t say anything I didn’t hear right after the election, and a lot is reminiscent of 2016. The Democrats went in thinking the election was theirs to win, and between anger over the Biden administration, alienation of significant chunks of the electorate and Trump’s salesmanship the Democrats lost even harder than 2016.
The Democrats are making a mistake by simply campaigning against Trump rather than for something. They also have taken positions more aligned with an extremist minority than a more moderate majority. Here at home the very unpopular governor of Oregon thinks she can win by being anti Trump but has said nothing substantial about actually fixing the state’s very real problems. I think this may bring the first Republican governor in decades.
Even if the Dems campaign for something, they will only do what keeps them in power no matter how destructive it would be to the rest of us.
Administrative paralysis is now key. The nation has become a less-stylized version of the 1958 Japanese cinema classic, “Yojimbo.” Playing the two gangs off against each other is the only remaining tool to prevent one of them destroying the country utterly.
I am a proud member of the Gridlock Party. It is better to do nothing than to do something wrong.