I agree with the Democrat Party.
After they lost the presidential election in 2024, Democrats commissioned an after-action report that was supposed to explain where they had gone wrong. This week, DNC Chair Ken Martin rejected the report, explaining his decision online: “I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards. I don’t endorse what’s in this report, or what’s left out of it. I could not in good faith put the DNC’s stamp of approval on it.” He’s not wrong.
Martin also released the rejected report, wisely, preventing speculation by showing everyone the thing he was rejecting. You can read the Democrat Party’s 2024 rejected postmortem here.
The report offers a fascinating insight into the problem of the consultant class that steers our political campaigns in both major parties. It was reportedly written by longtime Democrat consultant Paul Rivera, who has declined to comment on the rejection of the report by his party. This is how they think. It’s a 192-page window into what professional political consultants think that politics is.
Start with the shopworn slogans. What did Democrats lack? This: “a new, forward-thinking electoral strategy.” Democrats need to “reclaim the vital center of American discourse.” Focus less on “pie-in-the-sky narratives.” The party needs to “do the hard work” and “challenge our partners” to “hold us accountable.” Voters feel let down by “a broken system.” In short, “We must align our values with our investments to maximize the impact of our year-round efforts.” It goes on and on and on like this.
Then, on page 19, marrying four clichés in a single sentence to analyze the upcoming midterms, the report warns that “the writing is on the wall, and the call is coming from inside the House. We either adapt to the changing conditions of the arena, or history will leave us behind.” I kept being reminded of Matt Taibbi’s discussion of Thomas Friedman’s narrative style: The writing on the wall is coming on a call?
If you’ve ever attended a corporate meeting that started with a middle manager announcing in earnest that it’s time to think outside the box, you know this report in your bones.
For some insight into the depth of the thinking on display in the report, you’ll find this statement on page 16, describing the evil of the other party: “Nearly 3,000 people stormed the United States Capitol Building, leading to the deaths of five people, including one Capitol Police officer who was beaten to death by the insurrectionists.” That’s just completely false. He’s reciting received wisdom, not offering analysis. It’s 192 pages of bumper stickers, assembled into a scrapbook. Maybe you hadn’t considered this, but were you aware that ORANGE MAN BAD?
Releasing the report, the DNC annotated the heck out of it to show which parts they were rejecting. The effect is comparable to discussion: The author says what happened, and then the party says that no, that’s not it. Page 31:
The Democrat Party didn’t talk about Trump’s negatives enough. They just assumed voters would think that Orange Man Bad, so they never thought to mention it. If only they had thought to go negative. I just rolled my eyes so hard that they almost stuck.
As you can see from the next bullet point, the Democrats also know they’re losing men to a feminized and feelz-centered leftist discourse. “The Harris campaign appears to have focused heavily on women.” The solution the report offers is that men “require direct engagement,” so the Democrat Party should “deploy male messengers.” (Pete Buttigieg? James Talarico?) Also, if swing voters aren’t voting for you, remember that they “need mobilization AND persuasion.”
Every word of analysis is process-focused: If X demographic doesn’t vote for us, we should buy some X to make public noises on our behalf. Reminder: This is the party that hired Olivia Julianna to lead their outreach efforts to young male voters.
“Context and execution matter.”
“Compete everywhere. Limiting losses matters. Recruit candidates with rural credibility and show up.”
“Voters need to know what you’ll do and why you’re running. Clear accomplishments and concrete plans matter more than vibes.”
Falling asleep? I understand. Why didn’t consumers buy our lump of turds? We must be more proactive in messaging about turds.
Try this yourself: Go skim the report and look for the part where it discusses the decision to drop the basement-dwelling mummy who was sort of serving as president to swap him out for a party-selected candidate after the primaries.
There’s no serious discussion of what the Democrat Party is. The focus on transgendered everything, the hysterical discourse, the socialism and the rampant NGO crony fraud, the top-down manipulation of the election without regard to the party’s primary voters: not important, apparently.
This is what consultant-driven politics looks like, and it’s stale enough to bundle off to the landfill. As a wise man once said, the writing on the wall is a call coming from inside the house that changes the condition of the arena.
