by David Shephard, ©2026
(May 24, 2026) — After months and months of delay, Ken Martin, Chair of the DNC, finally gave into media and Party pressure and released the Committee’s post-2024 election loss evaluation (commonly referred to as an autopsy). It has become a standard practice in politics. Every four years the Party that loses produces a big and comprehensive report trying to explain why they lost and offer a way forward to winning the next election. The reports are produced by the Republican National Committee (RNC) or the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
How influential are these postmortems? In my opinion not very. For a couple reasons. The Parties always want to spin and cover for their mistakes, and those who are willing to talk on the record about campaign failures usually have an axe to grind and scores to settle. Parties have factions, and win or lose, they will always have a narrative to push. In my opinion an objective study to address why a political Party won or lost an election can only be done by people not connected with the Party.
The most famous losing Party autopsy that I can think of was produced by the RNC after the defeat of Mitt Romney in 2012. The report encouraged the Party to nominate a candidate in 2016 who would support amnesty for illegal aliens. Trump ignored that advice and won in 2016 and in 2024.
Well, in keeping with this political tradition, Ken Martin ordered the report, and then inexplicably decided not to release it once it was completed. He sat on the report, which caused many activists to entertain all kinds of conspiracy theories. Some Party activists started to imagine that the report would embarrass some prominent Democrats or that there might be a recommendation in the report that could tear the Party apart, that is, something in the report which could possibly open a wound between the Party’s far left wing and the very far left wing which could be impossible to heal.
Ironically, Martin did try to quash the report, but not for the reasons that anyone thought.
The reason that Martin tried to quash the report is because the final report that he received was incomplete, it was filled with errors, it was barely readable, and it was an incompetent and unacceptable work product. It seems that Martin made a key mistake, which was, he hired a longtime friend and ally, Paul Rivera, whose main political credential was that he once worked in the New York State Senate for a powerful Brooklyn lawmaker, to write the report. To say that the friend may not have been up to the job is putting it mildly. My guess is that Martin tried to suppress the report to protect his and his friend’s reputation. However, CNN got a leaked copy, which forced Martin’s hand on Thursday.
The report was 192 pages, and I couldn’t help but notice that almost every page had some red correction marks and disclaimers on it. I read through as much of it as I could. It’s almost unreadable, and I suspect that much of it was written by an AI program.
That report fails to give the real reasons Democrats lost and fails to address how Democrats can move forward. The report failed to say how Harris or any Democrat could or should have moved away from Biden’s policies, and it fails to say how Democrats can move back to the political center in 2028.
The report charges that Biden failed to help Harris prepare for the general election campaign, but it fails to recognize the fact that Biden had no intention of passing the torch to her. He had no desire to ever see Kamala Harris as President. He was running for reelection up until July 21st, 2024 – just a few months before the general election.
Democrats lost because they failed to get Biden out of the race before the primaries started. By the time he finally got out it was too late to get a legitimate or credible candidate. In fairness, Harris made the race much closer. Had Biden been the nominee he would have lost more states, such as Virginia, New Hampshire, and New Jersey. It was Biden and his family’s greed and lust for power that cost the Democrats the White House. Biden promised in 2020 to pass the torch on to the next generation of Democrats. People took that to mean he would only serve one term, but Joe, Jill and Hunter had other ideas.
Did Biden really believe that he could have gotten reelected? Was his mind so far gone that he didn’t remember that he spent trillions (with an assist from Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger) which drove up inflation? Did he forget that he opened up the border and let in millions of poor people, many of them with criminal records? Did he forget about the deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan? How could he really believe that he could win?
I remember the day just after the midterm elections in 2022. Biden did a press conference, something he rarely did, and he seemed oddly and inappropriately happy. Republicans retook the House of Representatives, but their margin was small, and the media spin coming from CNN and MSNBC was that there was no “red wave.” Biden believed that a lack of a “red wave” was vindication for him and his policies, and he decided then to run for reelection.
Well, Democrats stood by him, and he rightfully lost. But you won’t find that in the DNC (why we lost) report.
David Shephard is a native and very proud Virginian. Raised in Fairfax County, David graduated from George Mason University and majored in Government and Politics. He spent decades in politics, campaign consulting, raising money and lobbying. He is also a longtime conservative blogger writing for numerous blogs. He is also the host of “The Virginia Gentleman Podcast.”
David is the author of Elections Have Consequences, A Cautionary Tale, and his latest book, Norton’s Choice: An Inside Politics Exposé.