In a head-scratching move this week, Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin finally released the “autopsy” of the party’s crushing defeat two years ago – an incomplete, ramshackle document that Martin himself had fought to hide from public view. The controversy surrounding the report’s production and chaotic release is yet more evidence of a party at war with itself and facing an internal identity crisis.
Following presidential election years, the losing party typically commissions an internal report to identify what went wrong and how to fix it. Democrats did so following their drubbing at the ballot box in 2024, and Martin pledged to release the final report in January 2025. But in December of that year he reversed course, claiming that release of the report could “distract” from the party’s midterm efforts.
The 180 sparked loud criticism from many Democrats, which continued to grow until Thursday, when Martin relented and released the unfinished report – with some commentary attached.
“This document reflects the views of the author, not the DNC,” reads a disclaimer at the top of the document. “The DNC was not provided with the underlying sourcing, interviews, or supporting data for many of the assertions contained herein and therefore cannot independently verify the claims presented.”
“I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards,” Martin added in a statement. “I don’t endorse what’s in this report, or what’s left out of it. I could not in good faith put the DNC’s stamp of approval on it.”
The report drew immediate criticism from Democrats and mockery from Republicans. As Politico notes, in addition to containing factual errors and typos, “the incomplete report doesn’t mention a number of key issues that continue to dog the Democratic Party, including the issue of the war in Gaza.” Additionally, “in 192 pages, it sparsely touches on former President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out.”
“It sounds like we need a malpractice attorney because we couldn’t even do the autopsy correctly,” Democrat Rep. Jared Moskowitz told CNN. Longtime Obama advisor David Axelrod called the report “a needless waste of time.”
“We should take this autopsy with a massive grain of salt. Clearly, the people who put it together ran a highly ineffective, ill-researched process,” said Adrienne Elrod, a senior adviser on the Biden and then Harris campaigns.
The report is filled with dozens of annotations from the DNC, often accusing the authors of not providing “evidence” or “citations” for their claims – specifically claims related to Kamala Harris’s disastrous candidacy. The report specifically criticizes the Biden White House for failing to prepare Harris to run or providing support for her during the campaign.
It also critiques Harris for relying too much on “not Trump” branding and failing to establish a clear definition of who Harris was and what she stood for – more accusations that the DNC claims the report provides “no evidence” for. (As law professor Jonathan Turley points out, Harris’s defeat and failure to win even a single swing state should be evidence enough.)
The report could well be the final nail in the coffin of an already embattled Martin. Under his leadership, the DNC has fallen far behind the RNC in fundraising, with the RNC reporting $123.9 million cash-on-hand compared to a measly $14.4 million for the DNC. Many Democrats are likely asking themselves today what good it is to have a party chair that can’t even produce a passable report on an election that took place more than 18 months ago.
While Martin claims that he refused to release the autopsy because he didn’t want it to be a “distraction,” he has created an even bigger distraction by calling so much attention to the fact that he wouldn’t release it and then releasing it anyway while simultaneously denouncing it. Moreover, as one left-wing activist noted, the individual whom Martin hired to produce the “substandard” autopsy is still doing work for the DNC on different projects.
As much as Democrats may lambast the report, however, its central premise rings true – Kamala Harris was a terrible candidate, and Democrats are hopelessly out of step with everyday Americans. Voters didn’t like that Harris was forced onto the ballot through a blatantly un-democratic process, and they didn’t like Harris’s far-left positions on everything from transgender surgeries for minors to a full-on socialist takeover of the American healthcare system.
Ultimately, that’s why the autopsy is so damning for Democrats, as incomplete as it may be. Even after she led the party to its worst defeat in a generation, Kamala Harris is still the odds-on favorite to be the Democrat nominee in 2028. What’s worse, she’s apparently moving even further to the left, tacitly endorsing packing the Supreme Court, adding Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico as states, and abolishing the Electoral College.
As much as Democrats want to criticize the autopsy, they may nonetheless find that, if they continue down the path they are on, it could just as easily be recycled following another massacre at the ballot box two years from now.
Shane Harris is the Editor-in-Chief of AMAC Newsline. You can follow him on X @shaneharris513.
