Leaked DNC 2024 Autopsy is a Case Study in Stunning Incompetence
They tried to bury the autopsy. Then it leaked.
This article originally appeared on the Daily Caller News Foundation and was republished with permission.
Guest post by Natalie Sandoval
An autopsy of the 2024 election commissioned by the Democratic National Committee leaked Thursday. It is, in a word, “garbage.”
The post-mortem, first published by CNN, elides honest self-evaluation for sloppy conclusions and self-congratulation.
“At times, it seems Democrats are trying to win arguments while Republicans are focused on winning elections. Democrats operate in an ecosystem defined by reason even in cycles when the electorate is defined by rage. This highlights a fundamental and necessary truth — a brutal and efficiently delivered message will frame the choice for voters and help actually win the election,” the report reads.
Yes, Democrats are the Party of Reason. Recall former Vice President Kamala Harris’ insight into the significance of the passage of time in 2022.
“The governor and I and we were all doing a tour of the library here, and um, talking about the significance of the passage of time. Right? The significance of the passage of time. So when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time in terms of what we need to do to lay these wires, what we need to do to create these jobs, and there is such great significance to the passage of time when we think about a day in the life of our children.”
The author of the DNC autopsy believes Democrats were too hesitant to put President Donald Trump in prison.
“The retrospective evaluation of Donald Trump’s presidency was too positive. Given the ability of right-wing entities to slash and smear the Vice President, it was essential to prosecute a more effective case as to why Trump should have been disqualified from ever again taking office. The grounds were there, but the messaging did not make sense.”
Never mind that Trump’s mug shot proved one of the defining images of his campaign. The photo appeared on Trump merchandise almost immediately after Trump was released from Fulton County Jail in August 2023. The mug shot now hangs outside the Oval Office.
The author also alludes to Americans being too lazy to show up to the polls.
“Pulling people in is one of the hardest things to do in elections, especially in a modern information and cultural ecosystem where a lot of people are content to sit on their couch and be on the phone, as opposed to being out in their communities and engaging and learning about what’s going on in the world around them.”
What else is missing from the autopsy? Daily Caller Editor-in-Chief Amber Duke provides a breakdown:
The author’s analysis of male voting habits is weak. He notes that Democratic North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein performed better with male voters than did Harris, which “suggests his campaign found ways to connect with male voters.”
Well, yes.
“The national campaign appeared to struggle with male voter engagement; Stein’s results suggest a different approach is needed.”
It would be helpful if the author explained what that approach should be.
The author elsewhere notes that the “national campaign had a specific problem with male voters” and that “Harris saw dramatic drops in support among young Latino men and young Black men compared to Biden’s 2020 performance. However, Stein recovered significant ground with both groups, suggesting his campaign found effective ways to reach these voters.”
The report advises that male voters “require direct engagement. The gender gap can be narrowed. Deploy male messengers, address economic concerns, and don’t assume identity politics will hold male voters of color.”
The author does not provide a substantive guide to winning male voters. There is no mention of podcasts, for instance, which formed a great part of Trump’s strategy in reaching young male voters.
There is no mention of “pronouns,” “bathrooms,” or “sports,” all of which were significant culture war issues in the 2024 election. There is one mention of “transgendered Americans.”
The autopsy claims “pollsters concurred” that Trump’s “attack ad focused on the Vice President’s prior statements on transgendered Americans” was “very effective.”
“[T]he ad was a video of her saying what she said, and it was framed as an attack on her economic priorities.”
The DNC notes, in an annotation, that the report does not provide “source material or data” to back up this claim. The autopsy is littered with annotations from the DNC noting a lack of sourcing, internally inconsistent methodology, methodological errors, mathematical errors, incorrect facts asserted by the author, logical contradictions, and entire sections of the report that are missing.
Several subtitles appear, but have no content directly below them. Under the “Introduction” and “National Overview” section of “WHAT HAPPENED (ELECTORAL REVIEW),” the author simply wrote, “PENDING.”
By far the funniest correction appears in the section, “It’s The Future, Stupid.” In it, the author asserts that endorsements by Trump and Republican Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell in the 2022 Georgia Senate election constituted a “blatant attempt by the Republican power base to take advantage of name recognition and tough economic conditions to push through an unqualified candidate whose job would have been little more than rubber dstamping the president’s agenda.”
The DNC rightly notes: “In 2022, Joe Biden was president.”
In that section, the DNC also notes that the author “[a]ppears to conflate family and sick leave.”
The word “working-class” appears once, when the author praises Democratic Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s “working-class credentials and presence in manufacturing communities.” The report is oddly focused on the 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014 elections.
The final leg of the report focuses on the influence of American billionaires Charles and the late David Koch on conservative politics.
You may be detecting a certain artificial intelligence-flavored tone to these excerpts. AI-detection platform GPTZero flagged the document as likely AI-generated.
DNC Chairman Ken Martin announced in December 2025 he would not release the report, eliciting criticism from Democrats and Republicans.
“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,” Martin wrote in a statement Thursday.
“I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards. 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. But transparency is paramount. So, today I am releasing the report as I received it – in its entirety, unedited and unabridged – with annotations for claims that couldn’t be verified,” Martin wrote, linking to the report.
One wonders how much money the DNC paid for this mess.
The Daily Caller has contacted the DNC press office for comment.
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