What Went Wrong for Democrats

Susan Estrich on May 23, 2026

For months now, Democrats have been arguing about whether to release the "autopsy" the National Committee commissioned on what went wrong in 2024. The report was completed but then not released; under pressure, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin released the report this week, but only with the caveat that it didn't meet the Committee's standards, whatever that means.

In truth, the report finds plenty of blame. That's the problem with losing a close election -- and 2024, no matter how many times President Donald Trump describes it as a landslide, it wasn't -- is that almost everything you did "wrong" could have made the difference. Which doesn't necessarily tell you what to do right, the next time around, or address the very real divides inside the Democratic Party.

The report faults almost everyone. The Biden White House is faulted for not doing enough during the first term and the 2022 midterms to prepare Kamala Harris to lead the ticket, which, of course, would not have mattered so much had former President Joe Biden not waited so long to decide not to run, but that's another story.

The Harris campaign is faulted for writing off rural voters, relying too much on identity politics and not being tough enough on Trump. When the other side runs a negative campaign and wins, as Trump did here, the response is always that you should have hit back harder. With what, is the question.

One of the most striking conclusions and the most troubling is about the efficacy of the ad Trump ran attacking Harris on transgender issues -- in this case, on her previous statement of support for taxpayer-funded gender-affirming surgeries for prison inmates.

The report cites the ad as "very effective," and says that internal pollsters believed that "if the Vice President would not change her position -- and she did not -- then there was nothing which would have worked as a response."

Are Democrats in fact too far out front of voters on transgender issues?

Do Democrats rely too much on identity politics, an argument that works better with the base of the Democratic party than it does with more moderate, independent voters, whom they need to attract?

According to the report, "Harris wrote off rural America, assuming urban/suburban margins would compensate. The math doesn't work ... You can't lose rural areas by overwhelming margins and make it up elsewhere when rural voters are a significant share of the electorate. If Democrats are to reclaim leadership in the Heartland or the South, candidates must perform well in rural turf. Show up, listen and then do it again."

As for male voters, the report argues that "Male voters require direct engagement. The gender gap can be narrowed. Deploy male messengers, address economic concerns and don't assume identity politics will hold male voters of color."

The release of the autopsy and all the discussion about why it took so long to release it coincides with a new New York Times/Siena College poll showing Democrats with a strong advantage going into the midterms, but also with deep divides and disillusionment within the party. While the left is the loudest force on the Democratic side, it may not be the most popular: a majority of Democratic supporters said that they were generally happy with the party's ideological positioning, but 52% said the next Democratic presidential candidate should move the party to the center in order to win. Only a quarter said the next candidate should move the party to the left.

The Times found that more than half of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents expressed frustration with the party: "unhappiness spanned almost every part of the party's coalition -- including young, white, Black and college-educated voters -- and was especially strong among Democrats least attached to the party, who are the most likely to swing elections."

The real issue for Democrats is not why they lost the last election, but how they are going to avoid losing the next one.

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