Kamala Harris (File photo)
TOI correspondent from Washington: After months of secrecy, recrimination, leaks, and intra-party paranoia, the Democratic Party on Thursday released its long-awaited autopsy of the disastrous 2024 presidential campaign that resulted in Kamala Harris losing the election to Donald Trump, turning the post mortem into another debacle. The 192-page review, authored principally by Democratic strategist Paul Rivera, was intended to explain how Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election to Trump despite massive fundraising, a late burst of enthusiasm after President Joe Biden exited the race, and widespread Democratic warnings that the MAGA supremo represented an existential threat to American democracy. Instead, the report has exposed a party still deeply divided over what exactly went wrong.The report paints a picture of a Democratic Party disconnected from working-class voters, weak on economic messaging, culturally overextended, and organizationally complacent. It argues Democrats lost credibility on immigration, public safety, and inflation while Republicans successfully portrayed Harris as an ineffective steward of the Biden administration.Yet what may be most striking is not what the autopsy says, but what it awkwardly avoids saying. The report notably sidesteps a sustained examination of Biden’s disastrous decision to seek re-election despite widespread voter concerns about his age and stamina — concerns Democrats publicly dismissed until his catastrophic debate performance forced his withdrawal. Nor does it seriously scrutinize the chaotic process that elevated Harris to the nomination without a competitive primary after Biden stepped aside in July 2024.That omission has enraged many Democrats who believe the party establishment is still protecting senior figures like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer from accountability.The report also barely touches another politically explosive issue: divisions within the party over U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza, a conflict that alienated many younger and progressive voters. Critics immediately noted that a nearly 200-page document about Democratic collapse managed to avoid even mentioning “Gaza” or “Palestine” in any meaningful way.The findings themselves often read less like a dramatic revelation than a compilation of painful truths Democrats have spent two years arguing about on podcasts, cable television and anguished group chats. Democrats, the report concludes, failed to connect with Latino voters, men, rural Americans and younger voters. The party remained too dependent on traditional media and too detached from emerging digital ecosystems dominated by MAGA Republicans. Trump’s campaign, it says, learned more from Barack Obama’s 2008 organizing revolution than Dems did.The autopsy also criticizes Democratic spending practices, suggesting the Harris campaign burned through astonishing sums of money with questionable efficiency. Harris raised roughly $1 billion in a compressed 107-day campaign but still failed to overcome voter dissatisfaction with the economy, immigration, and perceptions of elite detachment.But the most extraordinary feature of the release is the Democratic National Committee’s own disclaimer attached to the document. DNC chairman Ken Martin practically disowned the report while publishing it, while acknowledging the document was incomplete, unpolished and lacking adequate sourcing. “I am not proud of this product,” he admitted, while emphasizing that transparency required its release anyway.The debacle captures the Democratic Party’s broader predicament heading into 2028. On one side are establishment figures who argue Dems simply need sharper messaging and better organization against an increasingly unpopular Trump administration. On the other are progressives and younger activists who believe the party suffers from something deeper: a leadership culture that is risk-averse, consultant-driven, overly managerial, and terrified of genuine ideological conflict.Many Dems privately concede Harris faced nearly impossible circumstances after inheriting the nomination late. The result was a campaign that often appeared caught 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 unify the anti-Republican vote. But the autopsy suggests the party still has no settled answer to the larger question haunting it since 2024: whether Trump’s victory was an aberration — or evidence that Democrats have fundamentally lost touch with large sections of the American electorate.
