THE DNC AUTOPSY: DID DEMOCRATS REALLY WANT TO KNOW? Do you know who Paul Rivera is? Don’t feel bad if you don’t; he’s not a household name, even among political junkies. A little-known former Clinton White House aide and senior adviser to the losing 2004 John Kerry presidential campaign, Rivera became famous this week as the author of the Democratic National Committee’s disastrous analysis — the “autopsy” — of the party’s even more disastrous 2024 Kamala Harris campaign.
Widespread, instant criticism of the autopsy has focused on three areas: what is in it, what is not in it, and how it was prepared. Other than that, as they say — no problem.
Start with how it was prepared. Perhaps the most telling excerpt from the autopsy is the note printed in red that appears at the top of the first and every one of the report’s 192 pages: “Disclaimer: This document reflects the views of the author, not the DNC. The DNC was not provided with the underlying sourcing, interviews, or supporting data for many of the assertions contained herein and therefore cannot independently verify the claims presented.”
And that’s not all. Other parts of the autopsy contain other disclaimers. Under the heading “CONCLUSION” is the note, “This section was not provided by the author.” Under the headline “NOTES FOR THE READER” is the note, “This section was not completed.” And under the heading “SOURCES” is the note, “Sources, interview materials, and other evidence not provided.” At several points in the text where there are charts involving spending and other numerical data is the note, “Sourcing not provided, assume to be Federal Election Commission data.” In another part, there is the note, “No evidence provided for many claims in this section.” And in yet another, there was the note, “Several factual errors found within analysis.”
What a mess. These disclaimers run through the entire document. A reader’s first impression might be to wonder how the DNC could produce anything so unprofessional. A second thought might be: Maybe the party never wanted to know what went wrong in 2024. The mis-handled, misbegotten, and until Thursday unreleased autopsy was their way of claiming to have investigated the issue while also trying to make the story disappear.
Ken Martin, the DNC chairman who was elected in February 2025, when the party was still reeling from its defeat, has struggled to do the job. At the time Martin became chairman, many Democrats were in a how-could-we-have-lost-to-this-guy-again? frame of mind. But did they really want to know how badly President Joe Biden messed up the reelection question — especially when most of them had been fully on board? Did they really want to know just how bad a candidate Kamala Harris was? Martin’s actions suggest the answer was no.
Martin gave the autopsy assignment “to a friend, Democratic consultant Paul Rivera,” according to a CNN report. But Rivera did not appear to treat the assignment as a high priority. He “volunteered to work on it part-time,” CNN continued, and then “waited several months to contact key officials with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ campaigns.” In addition, “Many top decision-makers in the campaigns were ultimately never interviewed, and Harris herself has expressed frustration privately that questions about the document have gone on.”
Does that sound like a must-do, top-priority project to you?
As far as what is in the autopsy, some parts are jaw-dropping in what appears to be intentional cluelessness. Take the discussion of the June 27, 2024, debate between Biden and former President Donald Trump. It was the turning point of the campaign and, of course, a catastrophe for the then-81-year-old Biden, whose cognitive decline became impossible to conceal. Here is what the autopsy says about it:
The debate obviously changed many things. The dial-testing during the debate demonstrated the weakness of the president’s performance, and a post-debate survey was scrapped. The analytics team measured voter reaction and reported seeing little change. The fundamental need to earn votes from the target audiences remained, and there was no positive movement towards the campaign. Post-debate, and about a week before the candidate switch, there were internal discussions about how to prepare a campaign for the vice president.
In other passages, the autopsy blames Biden for not sufficiently praising, supporting, and affirming Harris. It reports that before the 2022 midterm elections, the Biden White House directed the DNC to conduct a poll to find ways in which first lady Jill Biden “could support her husband as president,” focusing on “the settings, the issues, and the messages needed to create an effective framework.” The report then notes that the White House never did anything like that for Harris, even though she was vice president.
“The White House did not position or prepare the vice president,” the autopsy notes. “Had the White House explored and evaluated ways to leverage Kamala Harris earlier in the administration, perhaps it would have improved the president’s standing, and it certainly could have helped prepare her to lead the ticket. Any fair critic of the vice president has to acknowledge the strength and ability she demonstrated as the nominee.”
If Harris had any faults, the autopsy suggested, they were her loyalty and consistency. Because she was so loyal, the report said, Harris failed to distance herself from Biden, or, as the report says, “to find separation from the status quo.” And her consistency meant she would not back away from her crazy position supporting taxpayer-paid sex-change surgery for transgender illegal immigrant prisoners. Trump made a devastating attack ad about that, which the autopsy concedes was “very effective.”
How did things like that happen? The autopsy should have been an opportunity to examine how the Democratic Party got itself into such a situation in 2024. Instead, the document is unfinished, sloppy, and lacking in curiosity about almost everything.
There is a reason DNC chair Martin resisted releasing the autopsy for so long. Many assumed Martin was hiding an explosive document that would reveal his party’s political malpractice. But that’s not the reason. The reason is there is a lot about 2024 that the Democratic Party’s leadership didn’t want to know. Releasing the incomplete and ill-considered autopsy would show the world that the party never made a serious effort to understand its failure.