In the statement, Martin called the completed report a “comprehensive review of what happened in 2024” and said the party is “already putting our learnings into motion.” The decision that releasing the report would work against the party, Martin suggested, emerged from “conversations with stakeholders from across the Democratic ecosystem.”

But if the report is “comprehensive” in its look at 2024, keeping it secret raises more questions about who specifically inside that “Democratic ecosystem” will benefit from its remaining under wraps.

[...]

There are grounds for thinking the DNC report digs into these problems. According to a DNC official, the analysis found, among other things, that the party didn’t invest sufficiently in innovative digital tools; that its digital ads didn’t reach young voters who no longer engage with broadcast and cable TV; and that Trump—with the help of an ecosystem of right-wing podcasters and influencers—outworked the Democrats in the information wars. Democrats must play catchup in this department, the report found.

It’s good to hear the report concludes this. But it would be nice to know what specifically the party found on this front and precisely how it’s resolving to do better. Any such analysis of advertising and communications failures would seemingly have to look at Future Forward’s role; in fact, over the summer word leaked that Future Forward would come under heavy criticism in the analysis. If so, that will now remain undisclosed.

[...]

Or take the big question about Joe Biden’s age and fitness for a reelection campaign. It’s unclear what the DNC analysis concludes about key decisions made by the Biden campaign’s high command—people like reelection chair Jen O’Malley Dillon and senior adviser Anita Dunn, who is now an adviser to Future Forward—including the decision to stay in the race too long. That hamstrung Kamala Harris’s ability to get her campaign up and running in time. The lack of a public report may mean accountability falls by the wayside.

Asked directly whether the DNC had decided not to release the report out of concern for how it might impact the reputations of key party players—or whether the DNC faced pressure from key actors to keep its conclusions secret—the DNC official denied this and said the only consideration was what benefits the party. And the official declined to comment on whether Future Forward’s performance and the fate of all the money channeled into it was scrutinized in the report.

NYT reporting:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/us/politics/dnc-2024-autopsy-democrats-ken-martin.html

Still, even if it is good politics to stuff the report in a filing cabinet, Democrats may well be avoiding self-examination and a chance for introspection.

The party’s brand still appears deeply damaged in the eyes of many voters. A national poll from Quinnipiac University this week found that only 18 percent of voters approved of how Democrats in Congress were doing their jobs, a record low.

[...]

Some Democratic donors have demanded a more thorough accounting of how exactly the party and Ms. Harris spent $1.5 billion in 15 weeks en route to losing every battleground state in 2024. Since the election, it has come out that a former top aide to Mr. Biden, Mike Donilon, received $4 million from the campaign — even though he did not work meaningfully with the Harris campaign after Mr. Biden left the ticket.

“I read about that,” Ms. Harris said of Mr. Donilon’s compensation in an interview last month with The New York Times. “That was before I got there.”