The Democratic National Committee has completed its long-awaited analysis on what went wrong in the 2024 campaign. But in a move that will a
Greg Sargent at TNR:
In a move that should unleash harsh criticism and recriminations, the Democratic National Committee has decided against publicly releasing its long-awaited report on the 2024 election, which could end up protecting key actors inside the party from accountability over the blown but winnable contest. The DNC has completed the report after extensive data analysis and hundreds of interviews in all 50 states. But according to a DNC official, the committee determined that releasing it would spark a media frenzy and retrospective finger-pointing that could divide the party and distract from its winning streak in recent elections. “Here’s our North Star: does this help us win?” DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement given to The New Republic and a handful of other media outlets in advance of its wider release. “If the answer is no, it’s a distraction from the core mission.”
In the statement, Martin called the completed report a “comprehensive review of what happened in 2024” and said the party is “already putting our learnings into motion.” The decision that releasing the report would work against the party, Martin suggested, emerged from “conversations with stakeholders from across the Democratic ecosystem.” But if the report is “comprehensive” in its look at 2024, keeping it secret raises more questions about who specifically inside that “Democratic ecosystem” will benefit from its remaining under wraps.
Take, for instance, the Future Forward super PAC, which had a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars for the 2024 contest. Well before Election Day, the PAC came under harsh criticism from some Democrats who argued that it hadn’t spent sufficient money earlier in the campaign on ads attacking Trump, which may have allowed Trump to rehabilitate himself after his 2020 loss and the January 6 insurrection.
Other Democrats charged that Future Forward’s ad-testing model and addiction to traditional TV ads led to anodyne communications and that its flawed theory of politics caused it to refrain from sufficiently targeting Trump, letting him avoid blame for his first-term disasters on Covid-19 and the economy. Still others said the PAC didn’t innovate in digital communications, failing to reach and motivate young and nonwhite voters who helped tip the election to the president.
There are grounds for thinking the DNC report digs into these problems. According to a DNC official, the analysis found, among other things, that the party didn’t invest sufficiently in innovative digital tools; that its digital ads didn’t reach young voters who no longer engage with broadcast and cable TV; and that Trump—with the help of an ecosystem of right-wing podcasters and influencers—outworked the Democrats in the information wars. Democrats must play catchup in this department, the report found.
It’s good to hear the report concludes this. But it would be nice to know what specifically the party found on this front and precisely how it’s resolving to do better. Any such analysis of advertising and communications failures would seemingly have to look at Future Forward’s role; in fact, over the summer word leaked that Future Forward would come under heavy criticism in the analysis. If so, that will now remain undisclosed.
[...] Does it mean Democrats should forcefully make the case that Republicans are wrong about how to handle crime and Democrats are right about it, or does it mean Democrats should refrain from making that case out of fear of alienating voters concerned about it? Should Democrats forthrightly defend immigration as a positive good for the country and immigration flows as something that absolutely can be managed in the national interest, or should ministering to voters’ concerns mean they cede the argument? Failure to release the report seems to evade public debate over such hard questions. Indeed, the decision seems like it could create additional problems: It could lead reporters to ferret out the report’s findings in dribs and drabs that might even distort its real conclusions or make them prone to manipulation by factional party actors. At the same time, it could make the party appear more insular and less willing to seriously engage with what brought us a second Donald Trump presidency.
The DNC decided against releasing its 2024 elections autopsy.
