Why the DNC autopsy report matters

TLDR: Ken Martin should resign & we should stop settling for mediocrity

After months of delaying and denying things, the DNC finally released (or more likely, per CNN, was dragged into releasing) the lauded “after action report” on what happened in the 2024 election — and every part of it, from the process of making it to the way it was rolled out is indicative of how broken our party is.

On the report itself:

In case you have no idea what this autopsy/after-action report and the ensuing scandal is, NBC News has a good TLDR.

In two long-ish sentences: When Ken Martin ran for chair of the DNC, he promised to do an autopsy of the 2024 election and release it. Then he “hired” Paul Rivera, a friend of his, to run the process, declined to publish the final product, gaslit everyone who asked about it for the last five months, and then did a horrible interview with Pod Save America a few weeks ago that pushed this debate back into the limelight again. (My thoughts on that interview are on Instagram here.)

As it turns out, the report was never released because it was total garbage — half-finished and full of factual errors.

Per CNN, Rivera didn’t even talk to all the right people, never got all the relevant data sets, and apparently didn’t provide interview transcripts or intel so they couldn’t fact-check anything. The DNC staff literally annotated the report draft accordingly to make it clear how bad it is.

This initial take from Lisa Lerer sums it up:

I won’t waste time reviewing or analyzing content of this report because it’s so clearly inaccurate. There are so many obvious omissions (Israel/Gaza, Joe Biden’s age, the selection of Tim Walz as VP, the role of YouTube, TikTok, podcasts, creators, among many many others).

Anyone using takeaways or conclusions from this report to validate their point of view is full of shit and should not be trusted. It’s bad. There’s a lot of other thoughtful look-backs on the election if you want to visit 2024 in any kind of depth.

What matters is how this process was run, what it says about DNC leadership, and how we respond

I wrote about the DNC back in April with some myth-busting about what the institution does and does not actually do. To quote myself:

There are real things the DNC does that matter …

Most importantly: Organize the presidential primary — including determining which states vote in what order. (And ahead of that process, it’s really important that people trust the DNC. We have seen what happens in years past when people do not believe the institution is a fair and neutral arbiter! This is why DNC officials are not allowed to engage in primaries. I think this is a good rule.)

That’s why I’m staying on this: Because it deeply matters that people trust the DNC as a credible, competent conductor of a presidential primary process — the rules of which are being determined over the next 6-ish months.

This is not about winning swing voters or independents or anything like that — it’s about ensuring that Democratic voters (only 5% of whom right now say they’re satisfied with the party!) actually trust that the party can meet the moment and that the process of picking our nominee is done well and fairly.

Ken Martin is not up to the job.

Ken is trying hard to throw Rivera under the bus, which maybe is deserved, IDK. But ultimately the buck stops with the boss.

If Ken was a better boss or leader, he would have clearly laid out expectations and what success would look like.

He would have had check-ins throughout the process to find out how things were going. He would have raised flags about “hey seems like you’re not recording any interviews — that feels like an issue!” or “hey why didn’t you talk to X Y Z people??”

I mean, let’s be real: If Rivera had been doing the bare minimum of providing interview transcripts, someone could have bullshit their way into a report by feeding them into an LLM and asking for a summary of trends. He didn’t even provide enough for AI-generated slop!

When an employee or consultant fucks up, they bare some of the blame, but more importantly, it’s on the boss. Ken took some responsibility here but mostly, he put it on Rivera (ostensibly his friend!). That’s bad leadership.

And even worse: It sounds like Rivera had continued working with the DNC on a different project well after this report was turned in. While that seems to no longer be true per reporters this afternoon, that indicates a serious problem with Ken’s judgement.

He fucked up in execution, roll-out, and cover-up

To get a bad report back and then not fix it was bad.

To promise to release it and then walk that back was worse.

To then spend the next five months gaslighting people, telling us we didn’t need a report actually, that we were the crazy ones for demanding accountability for what happened in 2024 — that’s the kind of shit that permanently and irreparably undermines trust.

From top to bottom: This was pure incompetence. It was disrespectful to the staff of the DNC who work hard, disrespectful to donors who want their money spent wisely, and shitty to anyone who expects leaders to keep their promises.

We should not settle for mediocrity.

Ken cannot and should not stay DNC chair.

He’s already failing to raise the resources we need (per cash-on-hand reports as of this morning, the DNC has -$3 million on hand…). He will be wholly unable to rebuild from here.

If Ken stays DNC chair — if DNC members cannot push him to resign, or call for a vote of no confidence, or otherwise get him out in some way — it will be another proof point for those who describe the Democratic Party as a floundering institution unable to meet the moment.

In full transparency, as I told AP, I’ve been asked about being DNC chair. (Honestly, without bragging, I’ve been asked about it a lot over the last few years before this, too, especially by donors and supporters who are disillusioned with party leadership.)

But as I told the AP, it’s not something I’m interested in right now.

There are vice chairs who could become acting chair and we could have a new election. Maybe we could even reform the process so more than just insiders get to pick! (A girl can dream!)

I hope DNC members (who are admittedly the most institutionalist of institutionalists, dedicated to protecting the status quo above all else) will surprise us all and do the right thing here.

We should not settle for leadership who cannot rise to the occasion.

We should not settle for mediocre men enabling other mediocre men to fail to the top.

We should not allow ourselves to continue to be a party that people reluctantly vote for — one without vision or force or backbone.

We should have grit. We should have leadership.

We should use this moment to show: When someone fucks up, we do not hesitate to hold them accountable.

Ken’s gotta go. For the good of the future of the party, we have to clean house.

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