The Democratic Party spent more than $4 billion in a futile effort to win the White House in 2024, and most of the party wants to know why it happened.
After DNC Chairman Ken Martin took the helm in January 2025, he immediately promised to release the findings of an audit of what went wrong in 2024.
Then, in December 2025, Martin reneged.
"In our conversations with stakeholders from across the Democratic ecosystem, we are aligned on what’s important, and that’s learning from the past and winning the future. Here’s our North Star: does this help us win? If the answer is no, it’s a distraction from the core mission,” the statement said. Martin claimed that the autopsy would be a "distraction" and refused to release it.
That didn't sit well with most of the party. What was Martin hiding?
Some party insiders believe that the audit is highly critical of Harris and her campaign and that not releasing it was a way to protect her from criticism as she readies an expected 2028 run.
Harris says that the report should be released. NBC News reports she told donors "she believes the Democratic National Committee should release its buried autopsy of her failed 2024 campaign, according to a person who has heard the conversations."
In fact, there are several good reasons, from the Democrats' point of view, not to release the autopsy. Word is that the post-mortem blames everyone, saving the harshest criticism for Harris, the "consultant class," and the radical NGOs that pushed Harris's campaign far to the left.
Others have suggested that party leaders are putting pressure on the chairman to bury the report. “There’s speculation that decisions were made by campaign leadership to line their pockets rather than advance a strategy to win the election,” said a former senior adviser to Presidents Obama and Biden, Ashley Etienne.
Still others within the party ranks have suggested that DNC leadership was out of its depth, a charge that led to more internecine fighting this week.
“I believed the DNC should have been empowered to do its job, organize aggressively not just in the midterms (but also the presidential cycle), communicate directly with the base, and operate as a PARTNER, not a subsidiary whose tweets, press releases, and routine decisions required constant White House approval,” wrote Mr. Martin’s predecessor, Jaime Harrison, in response to conjecture by a former White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, that he wanted to focus on policy not fundraising during his 2021-2025 tenure.
Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show the 2024 Harris campaign paid millions in production fees to companies associated with celebrities, such as Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions ($1M–$2.5M) and Beyoncé’s Parkwood Entertainment ($165K) for event production and, in some cases, staging, though it denied paying for personal endorsements. All told, the Harris campaign spent more than $20 million to stage events with celebrities, many of whom never performed.
“We are all adults," Rahm Emanuel, former Obama chief of staff and possible candidate in 2028, told the New York Sun. "If we can’t handle an after-action report on how we spent $4 billion and lost, then we are all third-grade soccer players and get a medal for effort. God help us."
The party is now heavily influenced, if not controlled, by radical NGOs that have imposed an "Interest Group Questionnaire Industrial Complex" on the party. "The Groups" determine who runs for office and who gets the cash. It would not be helpful for Democrats to expose The Groups to criticism.
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Perhaps Martin's most compelling reason for not releasing the autopsy is that it will feed the fires of the Democratic Party civil war, now less than six months from the midterm elections. The left is very sensitive about being blamed for 2024, especially when that blame comes from establishment Democrats who wish most of the radicals would sit down and shut up.
Expect an "edited" version of the autopsy to be released soon.
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