Did We Learn Anything From the DNC’s Autopsy Report?

When the Democratic National Committee announced its intention to conduct an extensive investigation into what went wrong in the 2024 presidential campaign, many Democrats hoped it would provide deep insights into cracks in the party’s strategy, tactics and infrastructure – and how to fix them.

But the draft of the autopsy released on Thursday did more to frustrate Democrats and progressives than offer guidance. In short, the report – titled “Build to Win. Build to Last” – echoed many of the truisms and diagnoses that Democratic strategists, pollsters and consultants had been spouting for the better part of two years.

“A lot of drama just to release something telling us what we already knew,” one Democratic digital consultant told Campaigns & Elections. 

Among the issues identified in the DNC’s postmortem: former Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign failed to make an affirmative case for her candidacy and failed to distance herself from former President Joe Biden on key policy issues; the party and outside groups were too late to implement their programs, while Republicans built permanent political operations; and national Democratic messaging focused too little on economic issues.

Also notable, however, is what the report didn’t include. There was no mention, for example, of Israel’s war in Gaza – an issue that many Democrats felt had hurt them in the 2024 election. 

To cap it all off, the DNC itself broadly disavowed the report with disclaimers stating that the committee “cannot independently verify the claims presented.” The document is rife with annotations, noting contradictory passages and a lack of evidence to support certain claims made in the report.

Shortly after the autopsy’s release, Mike Nellis, the founder and chief strategy officer at Democratic firm Authentic, described it as “an absolute mess of a document.”

“[I’m] glad they released it, but woof—I don’t know, man,” Nellis, a former senior adviser to Harris, wrote on X.

The release of the autopsy was a dramatic affair, in and of itself. The report was originally expected to be released last fall. In December, however, DNC Chair Ken Martin announced that he had decided not to publish the report, arguing that making it public could prove counterproductive and distract Democrats from the more pressing work of winning the 2026 midterm elections. 

Still, some Democrats and progressives kept pressure on Martin to release the document. With little notice, the DNC ultimately made it public on Thursday, while issuing an apology for the drama the report had created.

“Being a leader at every level means you own every single mistake — those of your creation and those not of your creation,” Martin said in a statement. “This was a major mistake. I own it, and now it is time for us to move forward at the D.N.C.”

For some Democrats, however, the main complaint isn’t about the release of the autopsy, but the contents of the report.

“I could forgive the handling of how this was released if it actually said something revelatory,” one DNC member, who spoke to C&E on the condition of anonymity, said. “Like, yes, we know we need to start campaigning earlier. We’ve been saying that we didn’t make the case of what we were going to do to make things better for working Americans.”