DNC’s 2024 ‘Autopsy’ blames Biden WH, campaign strategy for Harris defeat
OAN Staff Jenna Lee
3:58 PM – Thursday, May 21, 2026
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) released a sweeping, 192-page autopsy report on Thursday detailing the reasons for the Democrat Party’s loss in the 2024 presidential election.
Following President Donald Trump’s victory, the report places significant blame on the Biden White House for “failing” to properly support then-Vice President Kamala Harris during her tenure.
“The national campaign did not effectively drive Trump’s negatives, and the White House did not effectively support Vice President Harris over three and half years to improve her standing before the candidate switch. It [‘Border czar’] was not the official title, but it was the one that the media propagated, and the White House failed to contradict or correct,” stated the report.
The report, reluctantly made public by the DNC, notably sidesteps several highly divisive factors, making no mention of former President Joe Biden’s apparent cognitive decline, Harris’ selection of Governor Tim Walz (D-Minn.) as her running mate, the party’s internal fractures over Israel following the October 7, 2023, attacks, or the four-decade high inflation Americans experienced during Biden’s term.
Former strategist for Bill Clinton, Paul Rivera, who drafted the report, noted that the “GOP’s victory in 2024 largely came down to its ability to learn more from President [Barack] Obama’s victory [in 2008] than Democrats did.”
“Since the high point of the 2008 Obama landslide, when he received nearly 10 million more votes than John McCain, the Democratic Party has vacillated between stagnation and retrogression,” the report continued.
DNC Chair Ken Martin initially promised to release the findings in January last year, but ultimately shelved the document in December 2025, sparking months of internal party backlash.
“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. But transparency is paramount. So, today I am releasing the report as I received it – in its entirety, unedited and unabridged – with annotations for claims that couldn’t be verified,” said Martin in a statement.
Despite the messy rollout, some party insiders urged a forward-looking approach. Adrienne Elrod, a former campaign spokeswoman for Harris, wrote on X: “I’m glad he released the report, as flawed as it is. Time to move on and channel our energy into winning the midterms!”
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