‘The Truth Is Better Than Continuing to Lose’: Petition Demands DNC Release Autopsy of 2024 Defeat

“We who are prudent would like to know what mistakes were made that thrust us into this nightmare we are living.”

By Brad Reed, Common Dreams

The Democratic National Committee is still refusing to release its internal “autopsy” report about Democrats’ defeat in the 2024 election, but at least one progressive advocacy group isn’t letting party leaders off the hook.

RootsAction has organized a letter writing campaign encouraging supporters to email the DNC demanding release of its analysis of how Democrats in 2024 lost the presidential election to twice-impeached convicted felon Donald Trump.

The group has put together an editable template letter for supporters to use, and it makes reference to a February report from Axios claiming that the DNC found that the Biden administration’s support for Israel during its years-long assault on Gaza cost Vice President Kamala Harris votes among young people and progressive voters.

“The truth is not just embarrassing but also inconvenient to those who want to persist in making the same mistake, in arming Israel, in shifting more and more of our resources into wars that devastate millions of lives,” the letter states. “But the truth is better than continuing to lose. It would be hard not to blame future defeats on your refusal to allow examination of past defeats.”

Norman Solomon, national director of RootsAction, noted that the DNC “spent hundreds of thousands of dollars at least doing interviews in 50 states,” to conduct its autopsy, but has nonetheless decided it won’t “tell the millions of people who donated money to the Democratic Party candidates in the last few years” what it learned from that internal review.

RootsAction senior strategist India Walton said it was political malpractice for the DNC to continue suppressing the report.

“We who are prudent would like to know what mistakes were made that thrust us into this nightmare we are living,” she said. “Now is not a time for saving face. Releasing the autopsy will help us understand what voters really want heading into midterms and the next presidential election. That’s the least we deserve.”

RootsAction last year released its own autopsy of the 2024 election, which found that the Biden administration’s support for Israel hurt it among voters, while also blaming the party’s strategy of courting corporate donors instead of organizing working-class voters who shifted to Trump.

“This was a preventable disaster,” said journalist Christopher Cook, who authored the report, “but Harris and the Democratic Party leadership prioritized the agendas of corporate donors and gambled on a centrist path, while largely abandoning working-class, young, and progressive voters.”