The National Democratic Party’s 2024 “Autopsy” Ignores The Obvious Cause Of Death
The Democratic National Committee finally released its long-awaited report on the 2024 election disaster, but the most revealing thing about the document may be what it refuses to say.
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🕒 5 min read
The Missing Cause Of Death
After months of delays, leaks, and internal drama, the Democratic National Committee finally released its official “autopsy” report examining why the national Democratic Party lost the White House in 2024. The document runs nearly 200 pages and is supposedly designed to explain what went wrong. Instead, it reads like a political exercise in avoidance.
The single biggest issue hanging over the entire 2024 election was Joe Biden’s obvious decline while running for reelection at 81 years old. Poll after poll showed Americans — including many Democrats — believed Biden was too old to serve another term. Voters watched the verbal stumbles, the physical slowing, the shortened schedules, and the increasingly painful public appearances. Then came the June debate collapse that detonated Biden’s candidacy in front of the entire country.
And yet somehow, the Democratic National Committee produced a nearly 200-page election autopsy that largely avoids seriously discussing Biden’s age and condition.
Even Chris Cillizza — the former CNN and Washington Post political analyst — was stunned by the omission. After reading the report, he wrote that “There is not a SINGLE mention of Biden’s age — and the public’s skepticism about his ability to do the job — in the document.” That is extraordinary.
This was not some side issue or niche political controversy. Biden’s condition was the defining political story of the campaign. It shaped voter confidence, media coverage, donor panic, and ultimately the unprecedented mid-campaign replacement of a sitting president by his own party. Yet the national Democratic Party now appears determined to pretend the entire crisis barely mattered.
The Debate Democrats Cannot Escape
The DNC report reportedly mentions the June debate only briefly, despite the fact that it completely altered the election's trajectory. That debate was not just a “bad night.” It shattered the central narrative Democrats had spent years pushing — that concerns about Biden’s condition were exaggerated, unfair, or dishonest.
The American people watched the debate firsthand. Millions of voters concluded instantly that Biden could not continue as the Democratic nominee. Democratic donors panicked. Party insiders revolted. Media allies suddenly reversed course after years of dismissing concerns about Biden’s age. Within weeks, Biden was out.
Kamala Harris was elevated to the nomination through a rushed political handoff with almost no real primary process. Democrats spent months afterward trying to stabilize a campaign that was built on political emergency surgery. And yet the official Democratic National Committee autopsy still avoids fully confronting the obvious question: why did party leaders spend so long insisting voters should ignore what they could plainly see?
Cillizza called the omission “UNFATHOMABLE,” writing: “It is UNFATHOMABLE that a nearly-200-page document purporting to diagnose what went wrong in 2024 does not mention the issue at all.” He’s right.
A real autopsy identifies the actual cause of death. It does not tiptoe around it to protect political reputations.
The Issues Democrats Still Fear
Biden’s condition is not the only glaring omission. Another remarkable absence from the DNC report is Gaza and the internal Democratic civil war surrounding it.
For months after the election, Democrats openly discussed how Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war fractured parts of the Democratic coalition. Young progressive voters revolted. Campus protests exploded nationwide. Activists targeted Biden through “uncommitted” protest campaigns during the primaries. There were endless media stories arguing that Democrats were bleeding support over Gaza.
Then suddenly, in the official Democratic National Committee autopsy, the issue largely disappears. No serious reckoning with the divide between establishment Democrats and increasingly radical activist factions inside the party. No meaningful examination of how the issue damaged enthusiasm and turnout among younger voters.
That omission matters because it points to the larger problem Democrats still appear unwilling to confront.
The national Democratic Party increasingly seems trapped between the priorities of activist groups and the concerns of ordinary working-class voters. Inflation hammered middle-class families during Biden’s presidency. Illegal immigration became a dominant national issue. Crime and disorder remained major concerns in many large cities. Cultural radicalism alienated many moderate and independent voters.
Yet Democrats often responded to those concerns by lecturing voters rather than listening to them. The result was a growing political disconnect between Democratic elites and the people they claimed to represent.
The Consultant Class Report
Perhaps the most revealing part of this entire fiasco is that even Democratic officials seemed embarrassed by the report itself. DNC Chairman Ken Martin released the document while publicly distancing himself from it. Incredibly, Martin admitted the report “does not meet my standards” and acknowledged problems with sourcing and supporting material.
Think about how absurd that is.
The Democratic National Committee released a major election autopsy while effectively warning the public not to trust it. That tells you everything. The report reportedly spends an enormous amount of time discussing messaging, infrastructure, organization, demographics, and campaign mechanics. But much less time is spent honestly confronting the deeper political failures that drove voters away from the party.
Rich Lowry of National Review was right to call the document an unfinished product. The report carries disclaimers about missing sourcing and supporting material, includes annotations that distance the DNC from its own findings, and reportedly lacks a substantive conclusion. It also fails to grapple seriously with inflation and immigration, two of the election's central substantive issues. Even where it acknowledges the damage from Trump’s “they/them” ad against Harris, it avoids the larger question of why Democrats had become so vulnerable on cultural issues in the first place.
HERE IS THE TRUMP “THEY/THEM” AD
That is what makes the document feel less like an honest postmortem and more like a consultant-produced damage-control exercise.
What is also striking is how reluctant the report seems to be to seriously evaluate Kamala Harris herself as a national candidate. The document critiques strategy, infrastructure, messaging, and Biden’s inner circle, but largely avoids a direct reckoning with Harris’s own political weaknesses. Even as the report admits Democrats lost the economic argument and struggled badly with working-class voters, there is little serious examination of whether Harris herself failed to connect with the broader electorate. That omission feels less like analysis and more like political protection.
The national Democratic Party still does not appear willing to fully admit why it lost. Because doing so would require acknowledging that voters were right about Biden’s condition long before party leaders admitted it. It would require acknowledging that many Americans rejected not just one candidate, but the broader direction of the modern Democratic Party itself. That is a much harder conversation than producing another carefully managed political report.
So, Does It Matter?
The real danger for the Democratic Party is not simply that it lost in 2024. Political parties lose elections all the time. The danger is that Democratic leaders still seem unable — or unwilling — to honestly diagnose why they lost.
Parties that refuse to confront reality eventually lose the ability to correct course. They become trapped in their own narratives, surrounded by consultants, activists, donors, and media allies who reassure them that voters are the problem rather than the politicians themselves. That is what makes this report so revealing.
The omissions are not accidental. They are political.
Because acknowledging the truth about Biden’s decline would force Democrats to confront years of denial. A serious examination of Gaza would expose fractures inside the coalition that party leaders still fear discussing openly. And a deeper look at working-class voter flight would force Democrats to confront how culturally disconnected much of the party leadership has become from middle America.
So instead, the Democratic National Committee produced a nearly 200-page report that manages to say almost everything except what actually mattered most.
With all of this, can Democrats still pick up seats in the Senate and Congress this November? You bet. It’s a two-party system, and Republicans are defined by our President, who has a serious popularity problem now, especially with critical independent voters. The general election is still over five months away, so too far away to know how things will go. But one thing is for sure: the Democratic Party is a hot mess.
Read The Report Yourself
Or at least skim through it…
Let me give you this caveat…. And also tell you that, strangely, the DNC-released version is filled with all kinds of notes, critical of the report they commissioned! It is clear this was released under duress (which is its own interesting dynamic).
It was released with this caveat by the DNC Chairman:
“When I received the report late last year, it wasn’t ready for primetime. Not even close. And because no source material was provided, fixing it would have meant starting over, from the beginning — every conversation, every interview, every data set.”