“We all know why Dems lost in 2024.” No, “we” don’t. There are many thought, many ideas, some which are based on information and indicate a willingness to hold ourselves and our party accountable, and some that seek to maintain the firmly held beliefs that we are victims, of racism and sexism, unbalanced media coverage, ignorant voters. Harris wrote a whole book, that I mostly liked btw, in which she pushes a very narrow argument for why she lost.
I don’t believe that there is a simple answer, that if one thing had been different, everything would be different today. That’s why they did the fucking autopsy. And that’s why they need to release it.
Is this all deference to Biden and an attempt to spare anyone associated with his failed presidency (Harris, Buttegeig for example) culpability and embarrassment?
Unfortunately this will allow those who “know why Dems lost” to persist with their uncurious self righteous victim mentality leading us into permanent minority status.
If I understood Lauren's report correctly, the DNC's methodology for its autopsy of the performance by Democratic party candidates in the 2024 elections was myopic, navel-gazing. All of the decision-making participants in the 2024 elections, the stakeholders, were consulted to produce the report about their collective failure. And they refuse to share the resulting report with each other or anyone else. Was there any effort to get any perspectives from outside their own echo chamber? How exactly will all of those people address their shrinking voter base? the party switchers to GOPers? the despair of people becoming non-voters? the crippling lack of competitiveness for US Senate candidates from rural states?
The Dems continue to make the same mistakes and leaders refuse to admit it. Ex: Schumer et al pushed Maine Governor Janet Mills to run against Susan Collins. Mills is a decent but aging, centrist Democrat who will primary Graham Platner, a rising progressive a la Mamdani, who the same democrats also refused to support. The old guard refuses to learn the lessons of its past actions — thus the withholding of the report.
If "everyone" knows why Dems lost, then what's the harm in releasing the report?
It's more like, the insiders know why Dems lost: it was their fault. Now they're colluding to save face, even if it means repeating the same mistakes and losing again in 2026 and 2028.
"Martin had decided over the summer to avoid addressing Joe Biden’s decision to run for re-election, as well as other strategic choices made by Kamala Harris’s campaign."
If those central topics were already off the table, there was no point in pursuing the autopsy project any further.
Personally, I put the primary blame on Biden's ego, and the prominent Dems who didn't want to make waves by telling him he was too old. Biden reneged on his 2020 promise to be a transitional president.
Not another dime to the corporate Democratic consultant class. These guys don’t care about people or winning, they care about their political careers and paying for their second homes.
One of Egan's earlier articles on the consultant class mentioned some consultants becoming millionaires off Harris' campaign money. It's really disgusting.
Martin started off with a ‘let’s figure this out’ and has succumbed to corporate pressure to not support issues for rural America and the working class. Instead they seem to be going for messages of Anti-Trump and saving democracy. A losing message for anyone who has economic woes….much of rural voters and the working class.
In it's own way the democratic party is as bad as the republican party - not quite as apparently evil (they still dislike nazis, after all), but still evil in thier own way. While there are some good democratic politicians, the party leadership (yes, I am going to say it again and continue to say it) does not view the voters as thier constituents, they view the voters as people to manipulate into voting for them so they can do the bidding of the corporate and wall street class - and of course the ever present 'consultant' class.
Who killed the autopsy? The fact that it was killed tells us everything we need to know about the democrats. They (the money and power people that make up the leadersip structure of the democratic party) think that becoming an actual progressive party would be worse and more dangerous than having Trump as president.
They fucking suck and they will continue to lose in presidential elections - maybe stuff will change after we lose to whatever clown the MAGA nominates next time, but I would not count on it.
They may not be as evil as the republicans, but they are holding the door open for them - so, yeah, the party leadership are just as evil as the republicans. Fuck these people.
What you said. The worst thing is they are not going to go unless they're pushed out. There are many really good Dem peeps in Congress and in the state leges, but the corporate, big donor, big ego, and parasitic consultant rot is rooted really deep and is going to do whatever it takes to keep its status, privilege, and power. Berinie's been calling this out for years, and now we have proof in the acid test of imminent fascism that he's right.
Once again the DNC has chosen to refuse to learn anything. At least this time they're not just pointing fingers at the Green Party, but just flatly refusing to own their massive miscalculations and blunders.
If the guy says releasing the report would do more harm than good, I believe him. There is a yawning gulf between Democratic centrists and progressives. Any “lessens” to be gleaned from the Biden presidency and 2020 campaign would only aggravate the tension. We all agree that our main mission is defeating Republicans. I doubt it serves any useful purpose to go deeper than that. From Spanberger in Virginia to Mandami in New York, I don’t care what their policies are so long as they can win.
The very idea that the Democratic Party should self-flagelate in public for the satisfaction of MAGA and self-hating Democrats is a strange notion!
Do we want to win and defeat MAGA, or do we want to pontificate in self-importance about how "bad the Democratic Party is"?
How could it POSSIBLY be helpful to publish a report that says "Joe Biden shouldn't have run for a second term"? The guy has cancer... c'mon. Lessons were learned, and we don't need to give haughty Democrats an opportunity to behave like MAGAs!
The thing is, I don't think lessons were learned at all - the report was killed by moneyed and power interests, the same ones that run the party. The democratic voters need to get pissed off and clean house from these old never enders. But hey, maybe we'll nominte Hillary again next time.
These peole are fucking cowards, and they are not up to the game.
I hear and understand what you're saying, but I have to ask: How do you know "lessons weren't learned at all and moneyed and power interests killed the report, the same ones that run the party."
Do you have some source for this information, or is it a conclusion you've reached based on suspicion?
I know many are disillusioned and assuming the worst, but until I see evidence, I will continue as Barack taught us: I will HOPE.
Ummmmmmm, OK, did you not read the article? Here is just one relevant quote:
" But Democrats familiar with the process say a number of relevant stakeholders also aggressively lobbied the DNC in hopes of coming out unscathed. Top consultants on the Biden-turned-Harris campaign privately urged the DNC to keep their names out of the report. And there has been persistent chatter circulating in Democratic circles that Future Forward—the main super PAC backing Democrats, which brought in $613 million from donors last year—was pressuring the DNC to not make them look bad."
The story was ABOUT the report being killed by top insiders and consultants.
Well... to be frank, you caught me! I did NOT read the whole article, as I'm pretty exhausted with all the bashing of our Party by fellow Democrats.
Just put me in this category from the article: "Xochitl Hinojosa, a former DNC communications director, also said it was the right call. “We all know why Dems lost in 2024. The DNC has and should continue to make changes, and that is one of the reasons Dems have been winning up and down the ballot. Let’s stop looking back. Let’s look forward and continue winning,” she tweeted.
You choose to believe other points of view, I choose to believe that Party leaders HAVE learned and are implementing changes... so, in my opinion, to publicly rub our noses in it would mostly be met with MAGA cheers (and some self-flagelating Dems.)
So, why did the democrats lose? It is easy to say these things:
1 Biden wasn't up to the task
2 The American public barely thinks about politics, and a 1/3 of them actively want what trump has to offer
3 Economic reasons - incumbent governments across the globe lost ground because of the effects of COVID
Resort those in whatever order you would like, I think this is the direction Hinojosa is pointing in when she says "We all know why Dems lost . . ."
But that isn't what I think - I think Biden lost this time for the exact reasons Hillary lost in 2016; people may be fooled by Trump, but a lot of them just want change.
Biden passed some decent legislation - didn't really communicate it that much, which didn't help - but his whole first term was a re-affirmation that the democratic party had NOT changed.
That they were still controlled by consultants and moneyed interests (the same ones who killed the autopsy) and did not have the interests of the voters in thier thoughts.
Biden was not the cause of our loss in 2024 in a very similar way that Trump is not cause of what is happening to the republican party.
Biden, like trump but in a vastly different way, is a symptom of what is wrong with the democratic party. The leaders of the party haven't changed, and they don't want to change. The fact that off year elections are going well for the dems now in my opinion won't mean diddly in the major races of 28 and 32.
They don't want to change, and more importantly they don't want anyone saying they SHOULD change.
So the report got squashed.
The democratic party, if it does no make substantive changes, is simply holding the door for the republican party to actually take over this country.
For heaven's sake, go forward and stop looking over your shoulders, leaders! Listen to your constituents. Be brave and creative. Ditch the old models. Ditch some of the old leaders if theyt can't change to meet the times.
I'm 79 and have been voting for Dems since '68. That's done now. The two party elites, the law firm elites, the responsible media elites, the academic elites and all the rest of them are sniveling cowards. A complete institutional failure of those who know better but are abjectly gutless.
Well... I'm 82, and I've been voting for Democrats for as long as I could vote.
Here's my conclusion: If WE don't vote, the Right wins. When the Right wins, the country loses. The damage done by Ronald Reagan is almost incalcuable, and the damage Trump is doing to America is possibly unsurvivable for our nation.
Yes, the institutions are failing us, but I'll vote as long as this body holds out because ... HOPE.
Actions in the new year should provide better answers than continuing to pick and choose from a multiple causes autopsy. The best action would be to show not just its base but all Democrats, Independents and disaffected Republicans what it really is. Everyone would agree this party is not MAGA or POT (Party of Trump). When will this party proclaim it is not quasi-socialist? As an independent I share aspirations with progressives all the way through non-MAGA Republicans. My estimate is at least 67% of Americans are yearning to believe and belong in a new sweet spot between the politicians, pundits and activists of the two extremes currently dividing our attention and energy. Get this settled and the unified platform and messaging, candidate discipline, and solidly supported kitchen table solutions will more than counter the current debacle and ensure more than marginal election gains and better progress delivered as opposed to just populist promise.
Thank you very much for the link to the Rolling Stone article about Melissa Hortman's life.
“We all know why Dems lost in 2024.” No, “we” don’t. There are many thought, many ideas, some which are based on information and indicate a willingness to hold ourselves and our party accountable, and some that seek to maintain the firmly held beliefs that we are victims, of racism and sexism, unbalanced media coverage, ignorant voters. Harris wrote a whole book, that I mostly liked btw, in which she pushes a very narrow argument for why she lost.
I don’t believe that there is a simple answer, that if one thing had been different, everything would be different today. That’s why they did the fucking autopsy. And that’s why they need to release it.
Is this all deference to Biden and an attempt to spare anyone associated with his failed presidency (Harris, Buttegeig for example) culpability and embarrassment?
Unfortunately this will allow those who “know why Dems lost” to persist with their uncurious self righteous victim mentality leading us into permanent minority status.
Fuck you, DNC.
David Hogg would have had the guts to release the report.
If I understood Lauren's report correctly, the DNC's methodology for its autopsy of the performance by Democratic party candidates in the 2024 elections was myopic, navel-gazing. All of the decision-making participants in the 2024 elections, the stakeholders, were consulted to produce the report about their collective failure. And they refuse to share the resulting report with each other or anyone else. Was there any effort to get any perspectives from outside their own echo chamber? How exactly will all of those people address their shrinking voter base? the party switchers to GOPers? the despair of people becoming non-voters? the crippling lack of competitiveness for US Senate candidates from rural states?
The Dems continue to make the same mistakes and leaders refuse to admit it. Ex: Schumer et al pushed Maine Governor Janet Mills to run against Susan Collins. Mills is a decent but aging, centrist Democrat who will primary Graham Platner, a rising progressive a la Mamdani, who the same democrats also refused to support. The old guard refuses to learn the lessons of its past actions — thus the withholding of the report.
If "everyone" knows why Dems lost, then what's the harm in releasing the report?
It's more like, the insiders know why Dems lost: it was their fault. Now they're colluding to save face, even if it means repeating the same mistakes and losing again in 2026 and 2028.
Per Egan's reporting,
"Martin had decided over the summer to avoid addressing Joe Biden’s decision to run for re-election, as well as other strategic choices made by Kamala Harris’s campaign."
If those central topics were already off the table, there was no point in pursuing the autopsy project any further.
Personally, I put the primary blame on Biden's ego, and the prominent Dems who didn't want to make waves by telling him he was too old. Biden reneged on his 2020 promise to be a transitional president.
Not another dime to the corporate Democratic consultant class. These guys don’t care about people or winning, they care about their political careers and paying for their second homes.
One of Egan's earlier articles on the consultant class mentioned some consultants becoming millionaires off Harris' campaign money. It's really disgusting.
Martin started off with a ‘let’s figure this out’ and has succumbed to corporate pressure to not support issues for rural America and the working class. Instead they seem to be going for messages of Anti-Trump and saving democracy. A losing message for anyone who has economic woes….much of rural voters and the working class.
In it's own way the democratic party is as bad as the republican party - not quite as apparently evil (they still dislike nazis, after all), but still evil in thier own way. While there are some good democratic politicians, the party leadership (yes, I am going to say it again and continue to say it) does not view the voters as thier constituents, they view the voters as people to manipulate into voting for them so they can do the bidding of the corporate and wall street class - and of course the ever present 'consultant' class.
Who killed the autopsy? The fact that it was killed tells us everything we need to know about the democrats. They (the money and power people that make up the leadersip structure of the democratic party) think that becoming an actual progressive party would be worse and more dangerous than having Trump as president.
They fucking suck and they will continue to lose in presidential elections - maybe stuff will change after we lose to whatever clown the MAGA nominates next time, but I would not count on it.
They may not be as evil as the republicans, but they are holding the door open for them - so, yeah, the party leadership are just as evil as the republicans. Fuck these people.
What you said. The worst thing is they are not going to go unless they're pushed out. There are many really good Dem peeps in Congress and in the state leges, but the corporate, big donor, big ego, and parasitic consultant rot is rooted really deep and is going to do whatever it takes to keep its status, privilege, and power. Berinie's been calling this out for years, and now we have proof in the acid test of imminent fascism that he's right.
Once again the DNC has chosen to refuse to learn anything. At least this time they're not just pointing fingers at the Green Party, but just flatly refusing to own their massive miscalculations and blunders.
If the guy says releasing the report would do more harm than good, I believe him. There is a yawning gulf between Democratic centrists and progressives. Any “lessens” to be gleaned from the Biden presidency and 2020 campaign would only aggravate the tension. We all agree that our main mission is defeating Republicans. I doubt it serves any useful purpose to go deeper than that. From Spanberger in Virginia to Mandami in New York, I don’t care what their policies are so long as they can win.
Yeh... what YOU said! Amen.
The very idea that the Democratic Party should self-flagelate in public for the satisfaction of MAGA and self-hating Democrats is a strange notion!
Do we want to win and defeat MAGA, or do we want to pontificate in self-importance about how "bad the Democratic Party is"?
How could it POSSIBLY be helpful to publish a report that says "Joe Biden shouldn't have run for a second term"? The guy has cancer... c'mon. Lessons were learned, and we don't need to give haughty Democrats an opportunity to behave like MAGAs!
The thing is, I don't think lessons were learned at all - the report was killed by moneyed and power interests, the same ones that run the party. The democratic voters need to get pissed off and clean house from these old never enders. But hey, maybe we'll nominte Hillary again next time.
These peole are fucking cowards, and they are not up to the game.
I hear and understand what you're saying, but I have to ask: How do you know "lessons weren't learned at all and moneyed and power interests killed the report, the same ones that run the party."
Do you have some source for this information, or is it a conclusion you've reached based on suspicion?
I know many are disillusioned and assuming the worst, but until I see evidence, I will continue as Barack taught us: I will HOPE.
Ummmmmmm, OK, did you not read the article? Here is just one relevant quote:
" But Democrats familiar with the process say a number of relevant stakeholders also aggressively lobbied the DNC in hopes of coming out unscathed. Top consultants on the Biden-turned-Harris campaign privately urged the DNC to keep their names out of the report. And there has been persistent chatter circulating in Democratic circles that Future Forward—the main super PAC backing Democrats, which brought in $613 million from donors last year—was pressuring the DNC to not make them look bad."
The story was ABOUT the report being killed by top insiders and consultants.
Well... to be frank, you caught me! I did NOT read the whole article, as I'm pretty exhausted with all the bashing of our Party by fellow Democrats.
Just put me in this category from the article: "Xochitl Hinojosa, a former DNC communications director, also said it was the right call. “We all know why Dems lost in 2024. The DNC has and should continue to make changes, and that is one of the reasons Dems have been winning up and down the ballot. Let’s stop looking back. Let’s look forward and continue winning,” she tweeted.
You choose to believe other points of view, I choose to believe that Party leaders HAVE learned and are implementing changes... so, in my opinion, to publicly rub our noses in it would mostly be met with MAGA cheers (and some self-flagelating Dems.)
So, why did the democrats lose? It is easy to say these things:
1 Biden wasn't up to the task
2 The American public barely thinks about politics, and a 1/3 of them actively want what trump has to offer
3 Economic reasons - incumbent governments across the globe lost ground because of the effects of COVID
Resort those in whatever order you would like, I think this is the direction Hinojosa is pointing in when she says "We all know why Dems lost . . ."
But that isn't what I think - I think Biden lost this time for the exact reasons Hillary lost in 2016; people may be fooled by Trump, but a lot of them just want change.
Biden passed some decent legislation - didn't really communicate it that much, which didn't help - but his whole first term was a re-affirmation that the democratic party had NOT changed.
That they were still controlled by consultants and moneyed interests (the same ones who killed the autopsy) and did not have the interests of the voters in thier thoughts.
Biden was not the cause of our loss in 2024 in a very similar way that Trump is not cause of what is happening to the republican party.
Biden, like trump but in a vastly different way, is a symptom of what is wrong with the democratic party. The leaders of the party haven't changed, and they don't want to change. The fact that off year elections are going well for the dems now in my opinion won't mean diddly in the major races of 28 and 32.
They don't want to change, and more importantly they don't want anyone saying they SHOULD change.
So the report got squashed.
The democratic party, if it does no make substantive changes, is simply holding the door for the republican party to actually take over this country.
So Diane, why do you think we lost in 2024?
If Dems refuse to share the autopsy report, it will eventually leak to the glee of the GOP.
As Sarah Longwell recommends: Just rip the damn band-aid off and get it over with ASAP.
For heaven's sake, go forward and stop looking over your shoulders, leaders! Listen to your constituents. Be brave and creative. Ditch the old models. Ditch some of the old leaders if theyt can't change to meet the times.
I'm 79 and have been voting for Dems since '68. That's done now. The two party elites, the law firm elites, the responsible media elites, the academic elites and all the rest of them are sniveling cowards. A complete institutional failure of those who know better but are abjectly gutless.
Well... I'm 82, and I've been voting for Democrats for as long as I could vote.
Here's my conclusion: If WE don't vote, the Right wins. When the Right wins, the country loses. The damage done by Ronald Reagan is almost incalcuable, and the damage Trump is doing to America is possibly unsurvivable for our nation.
Yes, the institutions are failing us, but I'll vote as long as this body holds out because ... HOPE.
Actions in the new year should provide better answers than continuing to pick and choose from a multiple causes autopsy. The best action would be to show not just its base but all Democrats, Independents and disaffected Republicans what it really is. Everyone would agree this party is not MAGA or POT (Party of Trump). When will this party proclaim it is not quasi-socialist? As an independent I share aspirations with progressives all the way through non-MAGA Republicans. My estimate is at least 67% of Americans are yearning to believe and belong in a new sweet spot between the politicians, pundits and activists of the two extremes currently dividing our attention and energy. Get this settled and the unified platform and messaging, candidate discipline, and solidly supported kitchen table solutions will more than counter the current debacle and ensure more than marginal election gains and better progress delivered as opposed to just populist promise.