TL;DR: The DNC admits, in soft language, that they have nothing to offer the American electorate aside from “At least we aren’t Trump.” They are toothless and have no counter to anything the Republicans throw at them. They have no plan to revamp the party in any significant way to become relevant again. They admit that Republicans are simply better at politics.
They have plainly admitted the obvious.
CNN has report highlights here for people who don’t want to waste time reading the whole 192-page report:
https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/21/politics/dnc-autopsy-takeaways-visUghh not even 1/6th of the way through it and it looks like the DNC just went over all of it with a yellow highlighter to say:
Nope nope nope nope wrong wrong wrong nope wrong nope nope wrong wrong wrong.
We Did Nothing Wrong and Plan on Learning Nothing!
I mean most of those would be pretty standard comments a reviewer would add, basically “citations needed”, and for the vast majority of the ones I saw, there would be an easy citation to go grab. This looks more like a less than final version or like they didn’t plan on even getting the final version completed. Like they saw this draft and said ‘aight we’ve seen enough’.
It’s also like… not a good report so far. I read the stein section, which was fine as anecdote, but that same worked example happened in 50 other states. There is no reason to not to do a similar analysis across all states. It’s not like they don’t have the data.
That differential performance gap is the same basic approach I used back and showed here, in January of '24 which showed Biden was losing, and by May showed it as being a practical impossibility for them to win. It was not well received. Thinking back on it, I actually got banned from a few subs for posting the results of a basic and standard statistical analysis because it showed how bad Biden was losing. It was bad here in 23/24 for anyone who wasn’t high on their own supply.
I’m gonna read for details on a bigger screen. The second half seems to be mostly about spending which, I don’t think had a meaningful impact on the race. This was a very simple and very clear election that was blown first because (D)emocrats insisted on allowing Biden to run, and (d)emocrats insisted on defending this choice when it was clear as early as December of 23 that Biden couldn’t win. It was Israel/Gaza and voters tried desperately to communicate that in the primaries, and the administration chose the path of having universities crack down on student protests.
The establishment disenfranchised the left volunteer base, and what the establishment failed to recognize, was that they don’t actually win elections for themselves, the volunteer base does. Individuals who show up and do canvassing, work to convince others to vote for a candidate, they’re always more engaged, further left than the average voter. They’re your shock troops for any campaign, and without them, don’t even bother, because you don’t stand a chance.
The Democrats are on deaths door as a party. And their only path to survival is to become a truly leftwing, socialist party. Anything less than that the neolibs will have handed the rudder back to fascism for a third time. And the fascist won’t be handing it back at that point.
The Democrats are on deaths door as a party. And their only path to survival is to become a truly leftwing, socialist party. Anything less than that the neolibs will have handed the rudder back to fascism for a third time. And the fascist won’t be handing it back at that point.
This is where the pain is. I have absolutely no faith whatsoever that they’ll ever do this. :/
I’m curious besides Bernie, AOC and a few others…. What elected officials even want to do it.
What elected officials
That’s the point, you’re usually not given the chance to reach the point of being elected. Usually the DNC works against you if you’re not a neoliberal. Now supposedly this new chairperson will not tip the scales in primaries, but only time will tell if that is true.
What do you mean? They’ve saved democracy from those filthy lefty progressives. And anointed their king Trump, just not as loud as Fetterman.
It was such a softball report as well. Everything was presented in this very soft manner that barely even addressed the major issues with Harris campaign and instead spent the majority of the report just pointing out all the places other campaigns outperformed Harris. But apparently even that incredibly mild bit of criticism was too much for them.
I won’t be able to read it until later - anything surprising in there?
Did a quick search for Israel and Gaza. Didn’t find them.
Nothing really major jumped out at me from my quick review other than how bland it was and how often the DNCs response was essentially “citation needed”. The main thrust of the report seems to have been that Harris underperformed with men compared to other campaigns involving Democrats, and that the DNC didn’t spend enough time running attack ads to discredit Republican candidates. The single most pointed criticism in the entire thing was one brief section near the end where it pointed out that Harris did a poor job differentiating herself from Biden.
Yeah its not a particularly convincing report. I think we as lemmings could probably crowd source something together of higher quality and better reproducibility in a few days or weeks.
Like the focus on one race as being the source of the performance gap is frustrating because it was ubiquitous and there is a real opportunity for a state by state district by district analysis there.
Did a quick crtr F for Gaza and Israel. Didn’t find them.
Same thing I did, first thing.
These absolute fools have learned all the wrong lessons, once again. At this point I won’t be surprised if they find a way to hand Trump his third term.
There will be plenty here defending every DNC decision to the hilt while they burn our ability to stop fascism to the ground.
That’s just wild. Not even just a bad take on the issue. No mention at all on the major intraparty conflict.
This is either an embarrassing hobby project by someone who just wasn’t interested in the issue or he was told from the start not to cover it. I don’t know if it cost Harris the election, but it certainly wasn’t a non-issue.
I don’t know if it cost Harris the election
Voters literally told them it was the issue and they ignored them. The Undecided movement was explicitly about this demand.
“No daylight”
👆 you don’t see the daylight?
This guy’s interview on Pod Save America was pretty hilarious. He tried to weasel out of any personal responsibility after running on releasing this thing.
They also later speculated that the DNC did, in fact, not even produce the autopsy in the first place, or that they did and it was such bullshit that they were too embarrassed to release it.
It seems that they were somewhat correct, it was such a softball piece of shit, that they were too embarrassed to release it. This is absurd.
Yeah just listened to that the other day, unbelievable how smug and dismissive this guy was, while having zero case or defense. Host was amazingly calm in the face of next level gaslighting.
The diagnosis includes underfunded state parties and Democratic declines in voter registration. The report also stated that a “persistent inability or unwillingness to listen to all voters has provided the other major party with opportunities for advancement at the expense of Democratic growth, evolution, and ability to find common ground with seemingly disparate groups of voters from coast to coast, and the heartland Democrats tend to ignore.”
The report also criticizes Democrats for relying too heavily on Republicans to “nominate deeply flawed candidates,” adding that “regaining trust and confidence in the party” and giving voters an “affirmative reason to support Democrats” will “take a comprehensive strategy and considerable effort over multiple cycles.”
Shocked! I’m shocked, I tell you!
How can we spin this to blame the left though?! /s
Clearly the left didn’t try hard enough for Dems to listen to them, duh
underfunded
DNC takeaway: “Please give us more money. Yeah, that’s the ticket!”
I think this is one of the things they’re actually implementing by sending money down to the state parties. It’s more of an allocation of money thing than a not enough money thing. Though now the DNC is reportedly not raising very much money, so it’ll probably become a not enough money thing.
They only have themselves to blame for it.
Wait, they’re saying that they need to be more queerphobic and racist and biblehumpy with that whole “not reaching out to certain groups of voters” thing?
I don’t even know who they are referring to! What a useless fucking document, I guess they were right that there was nothing to see.
Dems have a lot of shit to answer for. But the most egretious is simply not demanding a recount or an audit in swing states when it’s so obviously clear that shit wasn’t straight.
Can we take a beat to acknowledge that this shit has exactly as much evidence as the “rigged election” that Trump always whines about?
Like, there is no evidence for this incredible claim, and yet I hear people talk about it like it’s a fact.
No, there’s no evidence that elections were stolen. Dems ran someone with no electoral support, with almost no runway time till the election, and corpo DNC “strategists” kept kneecapping any good idea the campaign came up with. It really isn’t surprising she lost.
Like you understand that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. And no, a toddler saying they stole an election isn’t extraordinary proof.
Autopsy implies that it’s a human being. Should be called a necropsy because it’s clearly an animal species without higher cognitive capabilities.
Perhaps some kind of invertebrate because it’s very clearly lacking a spine.
Biopsy because Dems are only one foot in the grave?
Public pressure works y’all. Good job.
Democrats can either understand or at least pay lip service to the needs of the average citizen. Then they often go and vote the opposite.
Not even one mention about the 2016 primary and how sabotaging Bernie led to Trump winning. No mention of Biden/Harris ignoring progressives and sticking to the status quo. No introspection whatsoever.
This party is so cooked.
Autopsy of the DNC?
