Author of DNC’s 2024 Autopsy Takes Aim at Consultant Class

An unofficial review of the 2024 election cycle prepared by the author of the Democratic National Committee’s election autopsy is taking aim at some of the party’s most senior strategists. 

The 564-page report put together by longtime Democratic strategist Paul Rivera and shared with The New York Times offers a more-thorough – and more pointed – assessment of the 2024 election than the draft version released earlier this year by the DNC, which many Democratic strategists and consultants saw as punting on some of the biggest questions and challenges facing the party.

Rivera’s unofficial report, on the other hand, doesn’t pull many punches. One of the prime targets of his analysis: the Democratic consultant class that worked for the party and the 2024 presidential campaigns of Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Many of those senior strategists, Rivera argues, were hired because “they had been very successful.” In turn, he writes, they tend to be “financially secure” or, at least, occupy “actual places of privilege and power in government.” Consequently, the very people in charge of guiding the campaigns were insulated “from the realities many Americans are encountering in their daily lives.”

“It is possible the people ‘in the room’ making the decisions at the highest levels of the 2024 campaign misunderstood the mood and practicalities facing everyday Americans,” Rivera writes. “They missed important signals about why people were frustrated with Democrats, who seemed not to appreciate or understand their situation.” 

“This also applies to some of the campaigns for Senate and Congress, and some governors, as well,” he continues. “Extremely wealthy people and people with enormous power can find themselves out of sync and out of step with the American people – and without better tools and approaches to listening, the party suffers for it.”

While Rivera’s report doesn’t name specific individuals, it casts a broad net, urging Democratic incumbents and candidates to “demand more innovation from their strategists and consultants to rethink strategies and systems.”

Rivera’s decision to release his own assessment of the 2024 election adds to the drama already surrounding the Democratic Party’s postmortem. 

In the wake of Harris’ loss to President Donald Trump in the 2024 race, the DNC commissioned an analysis of what went wrong for Democrats. That 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. 

But in May, DNC Chair Ken Martin appeared to cave to pressure from some Democrats and progressives, releasing a roughly 200-page draft of the autopsy. Still, it did little to quell frustrations. 

The analysis was riddled with annotations and disclaimers stating that the DNC “cannot independently verify the claims presented,” and many Democratic consultants, campaign staffers and party members complained that it glossed over crucial topics, like the party’s loss of support among Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters.

But Rivera told the Times that the draft autopsy released by the DNC omitted a chapter, titled “What Happened in 2024,” from publication. According to Rivera, he personally delivered a three-ring binder, including the chapter, to Martin. 

In a statement shared with Campaigns & Elections, Martin disputed Rivera’s account and insisted that he had never received such a chapter, adding that the committee “released all of the draft report as we’d received it from the author.” He also noted that he ran for DNC chair on a platform of holding the consultant-industrial complex accountable” and ensuring “the party only pays for work that actually helps us win.”

“If I or the DNC had report materials that went after self-enriching consultants, we absolutely would have included them — just as we included all other materials provided by the author,” Martin said.

The topics raised in Rivera’s unofficial report are pointed. It questions Biden’s decision to launch a reelection campaign to begin with, accuses Democrats of taking certain groups of voters for granted and places blame on an entrenched class of political consultants and party operatives for failing to adapt to a changing political landscape. 

Those decision-makers, he writes, have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. And that status quo is no longer working. 

“An emerging critique of Democratic decision-making is there are too many people who have become generationally wealthy off of politics and who drive too much of the decision-making within the ecosystem,” Rivera writes. “This is deeply frustrating to many Democratic organizers, activists, and donors who want to try a different set of strategies and organizing tactics, but keep banging their heads up against a system proven to be inflexible and self-enriching.”