The Problem Isn't The Autopsy Report. This Is About Leadership.
Leadership failures inside the Democratic Party are becoming impossible to ignore
The 2024 DNC autopsy report was released, but this is not really about what is inside the report.
Plenty of people are talking about that. They are going to pick apart the findings, the mistakes, the omissions, the spelling errors, the factual problems, the issues it did not address, and whether it actually tells Democrats anything useful about what went wrong in 2024.
But that is NOT the real issue here.
The real issue is leadership.
And the sooner Democrats understand that this is a leadership issue, not a report-content issue, the faster we can move into the midterms with some actual clarity about what the hell is going wrong inside this party.
Ken Martin Created This Problem
Ken Martin campaigned to become DNC chair by talking about transparency. He talked about 2016. He talked about how the DNC needed to release the 2016 autopsy report so the party could understand its mistakes, learn from them, and be honest with the people inside the party.
Then he won.
After winning, he commissioned the 2024 autopsy report with the full expectation, at least from a lot of people, that it would be released. That expectation was not created out of nowhere. It came from the way he talked about transparency. It came from the way he framed the need for an autopsy.
But then the report became a problem.
By now, it is well known that he enlisted someone close to him to do the report, and the final product was apparently not up to par. It had spelling errors. It had factual problems. It failed to touch on major issues Democrats were actually talking about. It did not seriously engage with some of the concerns younger voters and other constituencies were raising.
(If you want to read about the autopsy report, click the below from Laura Rodriguez-Carbone)
So instead of saying, “This report was sloppy, I take responsibility, and I am going to commission a better one,” Martin decided not to release it.
Then came the explanations.
It was “death by a thousand cuts.” It was not one issue. The party would use the report internally. The DNC was going to learn from it and get better for 2026.
And honestly, I understood that argument.
I even said in a video (below) that while he never should have created the expectation that the report would be released, there was a reasonable argument for holding it close if the report was going to create more infighting than clarity. If the report was incomplete, sloppy, or not useful, then maybe releasing it would just make the party look even more dysfunctional.
So I was not against keeping it internal.
But then he released it anyway.
The Problem
Some people are praising Martin for transparency now that the report has been released.
I am not.
Because the problem is not simply whether the report was released. The problem is the decision-making that got us here.
First, this showed nepotism inside the party. He hired someone close to him to do an important job, and that job apparently was not done well. That alone is a problem. If the report was haphazard, sloppy, incomplete, or factually weak, then Martin should have owned that. He should have said the work was not good enough, taken responsibility, and commissioned a serious replacement.
He did not do that.
Second, he ran on transparency and then failed to follow through when transparency became inconvenient. That is not ideal, but it is also not uncommon in politics. People say one thing when they want power, then do something else once they have it.
Third, he kept changing the explanation. He told people why he was not releasing it. He framed it as an internal tool. He tried to manage the backlash. Then he reversed himself and released it anyway.
Fourth, and this is the part that really gets me, the DNC then tried to distance itself from the report with disclaimers saying the party does not stand behind it.
Well, if you do not stand behind it, why the fuck did you release it?
That is not transparency. That is fear. That is a leadership team trying to do everything at once and somehow making every option worse.
If the report was good, release it and stand behind it.
If the report was bad, own the mistake and replace it.
If the report was incomplete, say that.
But do not hide it, defend hiding it, release it later, and then tell everyone not to take it too seriously.
That is exactly the kind of weak, incoherent leadership people are tired of.
The Party Has a Leadership Problem
There are three major issues here.
First is lack of leadership. The party is being damaged by people who do not have bold ideas, clear direction, or the ability to unify through policy and action. Instead, too often, they try to unify through fear, pressure, and force. They tell people the stakes are too high to ask questions. They tell people criticism is dangerous. They tell people to fall in line because the alternative is worse.
That might work for one election cycle. It does not build a durable party.
The second issue is moral clarity. This situation would not have played out this way if the Democratic Party actually had moral clarity about what it stands for, what it wants to run on, and how it plans to lead. A party with an ideological foundation can take criticism. It can commission a report. It can read the findings. It can admit mistakes. It can explain what comes next.
A party without that foundation flails.
It panders. It gaslights. It hides. It leaks. It spins. It releases a report and then distances itself from the report it released.
That is not strength. That is weakness.
The third issue is the disconnect from the people. Voters care about issues. They care about whether the party understands their lives. They care about cost of living, corruption, housing, jobs, health care, war, democracy, corporate power, and whether anyone in leadership is actually listening.
But right now, too much of the Democratic Party is stuck in a branding war.
You see Democrats reaching for tough-guy personas to show white male voters that they are just like them. Tim Walz pulls an air filter out of his car to show he understands engines. Graham Platner is the oyster farmer. Others try to present themselves as rugged, working-class, no-nonsense guys.
But if the party thinks it can win with image instead of policy, people are going to see through that shit.
People do not want cosplay. They want a party that knows what it believes and can actually fight for it.
The Autopsy Is a Symptom
Confidence in the Democratic Party is in the garbage. Approval ratings are in the toilet. People are frustrated, disillusioned, and tired that the only plan is “Trump bad, Republicans bad, GOP bad.”
Again, all of those criticisms may be true. But that is not a governing vision.
That is not an ideological foundation.
The problem is not the autopsy report. The problem is all the decisions that led to this moment. The nepotism. The gaslighting. The sloppy work. The bad judgment. The media tour explaining why the report would not be released. The reversal. The disclaimers. The backtracking. The fact that the party somehow managed to make itself look worse at every stage.
This is not about the contents of the report.
This is about leadership.
It is about a Democratic Party that too often tries to create loyalty through fear instead of trust. It is about a party that tries to force unity instead of earning it. It is about a party that talks about being a big tent while punishing internal disagreement, ignoring grassroots frustration, and failing to build around clear Democratic populist ideas.
That is the hill I will die on.
We can do better.
We should do better.
And people are absolutely sick of being told that asking for better means they are hurting the party.
The Solution
The Democratic Party needs leadership that can be honest without panicking.
If the party commissions a report and the report is bad, say it is bad. If the process was flawed, admit the process was flawed. If someone made a bad hiring decision, own it. If the party needs to start over, start over. That is leadership.
The party also needs moral clarity. Democrats need to stop trying to brand their way out of an identity crisis and start building around actual policy, actual accountability, and actual economic and democratic reform. The party needs to stand for something people can understand without needing a consultant to explain it.
And finally, the party needs to reconnect with the people it claims to represent. Not by focus-grouping toughness. Not by pretending a photo op is a worldview. Not by hiding behind Trump every time someone asks what Democrats actually believe.
People want a party that listens, learns, fights, and tells the truth.
This autopsy mess showed the opposite.
That is why this matters.
Not because of the report itself.
Because of what the report revealed about the people leading the party.
This same methodology that you have laid out is applicable to our own local party in Cuyahoga.