Well, now we know why the DNC was reluctant to release its 192-page autopsy on the 2024 presidential campaign. The report is notable primarily for what it doesn’t mention.
Put simply, the DNC can’t handle the truth. USA TODAY columnist Ingrid Jaques sums up the autopsy:
The anticipated “autopsy” of the Democrats’ 2024 defeat shows that the party has learned … well … nothing.
The report is 192 pages long but says very little. Its biggest revelation is that Democrats want to blame everything for their loss except the main reasons behind it: the progressive ideas and policies voters rejected. It also ignores the devastating decision by then-President Joe Biden to run again, even though his declining physical and mental capacity had become obvious.
A Wall Street Journal editorial contends that party leaders “don’t want to tell themselves or their base why they lost in 2024”:
The main theory in the report prepared by party strategist Paul Rivera is that the Harris-Walz campaign didn’t attack Donald Trump enough. Yes, really. There are also some process complaints that Ms. Harris didn’t bother campaigning aggressively enough in rural areas, and long passages about insufficient or inefficient campaign spending.
Our favorite howler is the theory that Democrats were too rational to win in that cycle: “Democrats operate in an ecosystem defined by reason even in cycles when the electorate is defined by rage.”
What’s missing is any discussion of the many obvious reasons Ms. Harris lost. The draft report makes no attempt to examine Joe Biden’s decision to stay in the race for as long as he did despite public evidence of cognitive decline, or to investigate the political consequences of the hasty handoff of the campaign torch to Ms. Harris, by resigned acclamation, without a party competition.
It was a report filled with “glaring omissions.”
While party leaders escape blame for not having taken the car keys from an obviously faltering old man, the Biden White House—and by extension the debilitated former president himself—do get plenty of blame:
The report found that the Biden White House did not “position or prepare the vice president” in a way that would allow her to lead a successful campaign.
A Wall Street Journal news report on the autopsy notes that the words “Gaza” and “Palestine” do not appear in the report. And there was the border czar issue:
It points to Biden’s decision to put Harris in charge of the root causes of migration—an assignment that conservatives were able to mischaracterize as “border czar,” pinning the blame on her for the administration’s handling of a surge in border crossings.
Rich Lowry gives the autopsy a “D”—for “dead,” I guess—and suggests it could have been improved by using. But what did we expect? Lowry writes:
Although our expectations for honesty in such documents shouldn’t be too high. What was the report going to say?
That Democrats disgraced themselves by pretending that Biden was fit for a second term, and only shifted course when he got exposed in the first debate, and then had no alternative but to turn to a charmless non-entity as a last-minute substitute?
If only Harris had convinced voters that she was not the border czar. … The report did acknowledge the Harris campaign “overlooked” rural and male voters. Other than these minor deficiencies, the Harris campaign was successful.
Going into the coming political season, the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel suggests that Democrats have “Akinized” themselves—referring to midterms 16 years ago when the GOP ran such eccentric candidates as one who had to declare that she was “not a witch” and an unelectable guy named Akin:
It’s the Democrats’ turn now. In the party’s haste this midterm to recruit a younger, “fresher” “progressive populist” lineup, it’s getting its own season of cuckoo. Calls for “castration” of “Zionists,” mocking slurs of decorated U.S. servicemen, odes to prostitutes, laments for the dead Iranian supreme leader. They even have their own Wiccan defender. The media is keeping focus on GOP fights, but these Democrats are getting plenty of attention in their races, causing party leaders to shake.
Or to run, screaming, as in next week’s runoff in Texas’ 35th Congressional District. How else to handle Maureen Galindo, the sex therapist who led the first primary round? Her campaign’s Instagram account recently made a promise: If elected, she’d “turn Karnes ICE Detention Center into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers.” The new prison will “also be a castration processing center for pedophiles which will probably be most of the Zionists!”
Not that everything is copacetic on the other side of the aisle. George Will writes that purging Sens. John Cornyn and Bill Cassidy was a mistake that could cost the GOP in the general election. House Republicans have pulled a bill to limit President Trump’s war powers, and Dems say that’s because they were fraidy cats. The president and GOP Senators are colliding over the controversial $1.7 billion anti-weaponization fund.
What would it take for the GOP to pull off the midterms? Victory in Iran (which would bring down fuel prices, among other things), says Marc Thiessen. Would the chattering classes be able to accept such a win? Benard-Henri Levy notices something unsavory about our “thought leaders”:
I watch the television generals and studio experts. They seem electrified by every image of smoke rising over an emirate and every siren sounding on a U.S. base.
Recipe Book. I would be remiss if I let the week go by without a mention of the Bundt Cake Caper. From Jonathan Turley:
Former Justice Department prosecutor Carmen Mercedes Lineberger has been indicted for allegedly removing confidential Justice Department material and then concealing her efforts. Lineberger is accused of secretly transferring former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s final report and hiding the material under files labeled “chocolate cake recipe” and “bundt cake recipe.” There has not been a greater recipe for disaster since aides tried to fit all of President Joe Biden’s candles on a cake. The case is particularly interesting because there was another person who was accused of a secret removal of Justice Department material who was not prosecuted: former FBI Director James Comey.
Meanwhile, Randi’s Recipe for Millionaire’s Cake:
Teacher union honcho Randi Weingarten’s 2025 vanity book “Why Fascists Fear Teachers” isn’t just a self-promoting, self-glorifying soliloquy: The unreadable screed also served as a helpful cash conduit for Weingarten and her friends to make bank on the back of teachers’ union dues.
I was never a Colbert fan (surprise, surprise), but I sorta wish I’d tuned in for his last show.
We mourn the death of Robert L. Woodson,1937-1936. From an editorial in the Wall Street Journal:
The American civil-rights movement has many heroes, and one of the most unsung was Robert L. Woodson Sr. The native of South Philadelphia, who died Tuesday at age 89, made his mark in the tradition of Booker T. Washington by arguing that the best path for empowering minorities and the poor is helping them lift up themselves.
Raised by a single mother after his father died soon after his birth, Woodson dropped out of high school to join the Air Force. He earned his high-school GED as an airman and went on to get degrees at Cheyney University and the University of Pennsylvania.
Woodson never denied that racism continues to exist in America. But he believed it was a cruel tyranny if minorities used racism as an excuse for not taking the opportunities available in this country. ….His legacy will live on in the Woodson Center he founded in 1981 to promote self-help solutions in low-income neighborhoods. He also created the 1776 Unites campaign to counter the 1619 Project of the New York Times that claims the real American founding was when the first slaves arrived on these shores.
Hope you enjoy the Memorial Day festivities and remember those who gave their lives to preserve our lives in the freest country the world has ever known. See you Tuesday.
