DNC election autopsy faults Harris campaign, omits Biden run and Gaza

It was a long-awaited accounting of the Democrats’ 2024 election loss, but the Democratic National Committee’s long-delayed autopsy report arrived with a caution sign: a disclaimer printed at the top of pages saying the document reflected the views of its author and that the DNC had not been provided with underlying sourcing, interviews, or supporting data for many of the assertions inside. The report’s release also followed months of delay from DNC chair Ken Martin, who had initially promised to put the document out but said he kept it hidden to avoid creating a distraction ahead of the midterms.

Martin ultimately released the report, according to the Associated Press, saying it had been withheld because it was “shoddily done.” The AP described the document as a 192-page autopsy and laid out takeaways from its assessment of what went wrong in the campaign that culminated in Harris’s defeat.

One of the report’s central criticisms focused on how Harris was set up after Biden chose to end his presidential campaign. The autopsy said the Biden White House did not position or prepare Harris in a way that would allow her to lead a successful campaign, and it pointed to what it characterized as scramble efforts after Biden announced his departure in July—scrambling to get fresh public opinion on Harris’s biography and record, her vision and plan, and attacks and responses.

The report also faulted the campaign’s ability to respond to a specific line of Republican criticism, including the anti-transgender attacks that the autopsy highlighted as a sensitive issue for which it said Harris lacked a workable answer. In the AP’s description of the report, the document said polling led the campaign to conclude Harris had no response that would work if she would not change her position, noting that Trump’s campaign and allied groups emphasized Harris’s prior support for taxpayer-funded gender-affirming surgeries for prison inmates.

The autopsy’s tone extended to how Democrats portrayed Trump to voters. While some Democrats had criticized Harris’s campaign for spending time campaigning with Republicans such as Liz Cheney or for lacking a strong economic message, the report reached a different conclusion on the question of persuasion, according to the AP: it said Democrats did not do enough negative advertising at the scale required, while Trump’s campaign and supportive Super PACs went “full throttle” against Harris.

In addition to calling out advertising decisions, the report said Democrats made a mistake by assuming voters already knew Trump’s “various weaknesses.” The AP described the report as saying the idea that Trump’s negatives were “baked in” was a major failure of analysis and reality, and the report included annotations from DNC leadership disputing or challenging parts of those conclusions, including comments such as “no evidence provided” and “contradicts claims elsewhere in report.”

Beyond the report’s critique of campaign tactics, the AP described concerns about outreach to key blocs and about the party’s messaging approach. The autopsy criticized Harris’s outreach to segments of America and included references described by the AP as derisive about “identity politics,” while raising “serious concerns” about Latinos. It said Democrats could not assume Latino voters—especially younger Latino men—would reliably remain part of the base, and it argued for a complete rethink of Latino outreach beyond tactics like Spanish-language ads and late-cycle surrogates.

The report tied its recommendations to examples of statewide Democratic wins in Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina, and it said those results suggested economic messaging and addressing cost-of-living concerns resonated more than identity politics. The AP also said the report flagged Democrats’ underperformance with men, describing it as requiring direct engagement, with the report stating that the gender gap could be narrowed and that male messengers and economic concerns should be emphasized.

The autopsy also discussed rural voters. It said Harris wrote off rural America by assuming urban and suburban margins would compensate, and it argued that the “math doesn’t work” because rural voters were a significant share of the electorate. The report concluded with a directive that candidates must perform well in rural areas, summarized by the AP as “Show up, listen, and then do it again.”

Despite those critiques and prescriptions, some Democrats focused on gaps they said the report did not address. The AP said the report was “far from comprehensive” and avoided certain critical factors, including the role of Biden’s decision to run for a second term at 81 and how Biden’s withdrawal changed the race. It also noted that the words “Gaza” and “Israel” did not appear anywhere in the text, and it cited Debbie Dingell of Michigan, whose comments said it was wrong to leave out the topic while Jewish and Muslim communities faced rising hatred.

Dingell’s criticism underscored the report’s political problem as Democrats interpreted it: even as the autopsy offered internal assessments of strategy, messaging and outreach, the document’s omissions—particularly regarding the Gaza conflict and the timeline around Biden’s run—became part of its public reception.