The action from the Democratic National Committee to suppress the publication regarding its own post-election analysis on the 2024 election seems shocking yet entirely predictable. Averse to unpleasant candor, the party's leadership apparatus behaves closer to a communications shop rather than a political organization committed to building local power for winning elections.
A Culture That Avoids Dissent
Unwilling to depart from the prevailing attitude demanding unity, the DNC has remained under the Biden-Harris shadow throughout this past year. Publishing an official autopsy could have demonstrated that the leadership actually want to foster public discourse about the errors which allowed the former president to become president again. Instead, the DNC is proceeding under the pretense that there is little to glean from the stunning loss of 2024.
"Here’s our North Star: will this lead to victory? If the answer is no, it’s a distraction from the core mission," a rationale that has been offered for withholding the report.
Major Failures an Analysis Would Have Examined
Any valuable post-mortem of substance would confront key points of failure. These include:
- Electoral Disenchantment: Failing to retain among millions of voters that backed the Democratic ticket in 2020 was decisive in the close recent race.
- The Decision to Run: The unwavering choice of the incumbent to seek re-election, and a very late exit, is seen by some as robbing the party's base the chance for a genuine choice.
- Losing Touch With Everyday Americans: During a time of rising costs, the campaign is criticized for bowing to corporate donors' interests and not managing to confront the role of corporate greed.
- The Gaza Impact: The refusal to reconsider an approach on a major international conflict allegedly caused alienating significant blocs, notably with young people, Arab American communities, Muslim voters.
- A Decline in Young Voter Support: Research shows a huge decrease in votes for the candidate among young voters.
A Pattern Avoiding Accountability
Choosing secrecy aligns with a longstanding habit of sidestepping uncomfortable facts. This mirrors a dynamic where the vast majority of elected Democrat in Congress went along with an incumbent's determination to running for re-election until a disastrous public debate performance led to a change.
Concurrently, large majorities of Democratic voters were continually telling surveyors that they opposed that candidate to be the nominee.
Financial Issues
A thorough report would also probe questions about campaign spending, including the amounts flowed to insider consultants and advertising contractors over the course of a campaign which expended an enormous war chest over a few months.
The Larger Implication
Fundamentally, the suppression surrounding this report points to a deference toward the established hierarchy who engineered an unsuccessful national race. The implication to the party's base – including millions of loyal volunteers – appears to be that they cannot have a right to understand the lessons the leadership claim to have learned from an analysis based on feedback from all states.
An organization unwilling to publicly examine its mistakes finds it difficult to climb out of the rut which was so beneficial to the winning candidate.
