By The New York Post Editorial Board
It’s now obvious why the Democratic National Committee never wanted to release the draft “autopsy” of the failed 2024 Harris-Walz campaign: The document spells out how the party offers nothing for normal people.
The DNC only officially shared the draft after it had leaked to at least one media outlet, in a blatant attempt to limit the damage by fully disowning the analysis.
But the autopsy’s candor is often striking, and totally at odds with party insiders’ usual pap.
“We must admit and accept some hard truths,” it declares. “The Democratic Party has vacillated between stagnation and retrogression” ever since Barack Obama’s victory in 2008.
Worse: “We have lost the confidence we once received from ordinary Americans.
“Our candidates have proven incapable of projecting strength, unity, and leadership, and voters have drifted away.”
Democrats sold Joe Biden — inexplicably — as the tribune of the working class, but the autopsy warns the party failed to “[cement] a relationship with working Americans.”
That’s an understatement: The Harris campaign was welded to a platform that totally alienated the typical American voter — policies that Biden had pursued.
For example:
- “Climate change and green energy transition messaging created anxiety among workers in traditional industries.”
- “The focus on social issues over economic issues alienated socially conservative voters who prioritized kitchen table concerns.”
- “The ‘Bidenomics’ framing emphasized macro statistics rather than the micro realities voters experienced daily.”
And that barely scrapes the surface of the Dems’ rotten agenda, from open borders to obsessive “diversity, equity and inclusion” racism, trans-ing teens behind their parents’ backs, and demanding we all downscale our lifestyles to reach absurdly low levels of energy consumption.
Ultimately, the autopsy concludes, “the problem is Harris lost the economic argument … voters wanted change, and did not see the Democrats as being enough.”
The anonymous author of this report was blunt about delivering sober home truths about things the Democrats didn’t want to hear, even if it came couched with excuses about the right supposedly controlling the media environment and so on.
And many Dems are superficially heeding some of its advice, such as repeating the word “affordability” enough that even they might someday prioritize it for real.
But it’s all shadow puppetry with no real ideas or a program for growing the economy and expanding prosperity.
The autopsy of the 2024 election may point the way to reviving the corpse of the Democratic Party, but without a rejuvenated brain full of genuinely fresh ideas, this zombie is going to sleepwalk into 2028.
Democrats’ ‘autopsy’ of 2024 defeat shows why their 2028 run may be just as deadly https://t.co/JmMV1OhxJW pic.twitter.com/O8jC7CF5wm
— NY Post Opinion (@NYPostOpinion) May 22, 2026
