Autopsy Dissection

A truncated version of the Democratic Party's autopsy of the party's 2024 election loss to Trump is out, and it essentially says that the party didn't relate to voters enough.

Thank you, Captain Obvious!

I have no hope in the Democratic Party learning from its mistakes, mainly because it never has - at least not in the past 45 years.  Also, progressives and moderates see the failure of the party to communicate effectively with voters see the results of the autopsy - such as they are - and derive entirely different takeaways.  Progressives say that Kamala Harris lost because the party wouldn't condemn Israeli atrocities in Gaza (which the autopsy did not mention) and threw marginalized groups under the bus while not talking enough about issues like climate change.  Moderates - and sympathetic ex-Republicans like Rick Wilson - say that Harris lost because they were afraid to offend marginalized groups - hence the party's failure to respond to the Trump campaign's attack ads about transsexual issues - and talked too much about issues like climate change and not enough about the economy.

Both progressives and moderates have this much in common - they both despise DNC chairman Ken Martin.     

Martin is considered a party hack who thinks that all he has to do is tweak the practices of the mainstream Democratic Party and deliver a milquetoast message that tries to appeal to progressives and moderates but ultimately satisfies neither.  The only Democratic strategist who has championed him in recent months is Simon Rosenberg, who insists that Martin is doing the work to strengthen state parties in states dominated by Republicans that Democrats had previously written off.  In other words. Rosenberg is praising Martin for bringing the same pablum message to Alaska, Texas, Iowa and North Carolina that Democrats tried in all seven swing states in 2024 to no avail.  And lest you think that Simon Rosenberg is a seasoned Democratic operative who knows Ken Martin better than I do and therefore I shouldn't critique him so harshly, I need to remind you that Rosenberg was the chap who spent the 2024 election campaign saying that he'd rather be a Democrat than a Republican ("I'd rather be us than them")  and that the Democrats were winning but hadn't won yet.  

The day after the election, I commented on one of Rosenberg's YouTube videos, saying, "I'd rather be them than us."

This disagreement between progressives and moderates, by the way, is not only toxic, it could undermine Democratic chances of winning back one or both houses of Congress.  Take the U.S. Senate race in Michigan, for example.  Progressive Democrat Abdul El-Sayed is leading in the Democratic primary polls over two women, Mallory McMorrow and Hayley Stevens, who are more in the vein of Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer.  Progressives like noted centrist-basher Jennifer Welch are rooting for al-Sayed to win, while veteran Democratic strategist James Carville, who can't stand progressives for being so sanctimonious and elitist, is hoping that one of the women withdraw from the campaign to avoid splitting the anti-El-Sayed vote.  If the movers and shakers of the Democratic Party can't be united in the primaries, how can they be united in the general midterm elections?  

This division in the Democratic Party has been evident for a decade, from the divide between moderate Hillary Clinton and progressive Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential campaign to the 2025DNC chairman election in which the chief contestants were the moderate Ken Martin and progressive Ben Wikler.  In both contests, a third candidate offered a more unifying strategy to build up the party - Martin O'Malley.  In both cases, he was ignored and came in third place - both times too distant a third place to matter. 😡