A long-awaited internal document from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was released Thursday, shedding light on critical strategic missteps that impacted the 2024 presidential election. The 192-page report, penned by Democratic strategist Paul Rivera, was commissioned by the DNC to provide an autopsy of the campaign and has ignited a fresh wave of internal party debate after months of resistance to its release from DNC Chair Ken Martin.
"An incumbent Vice President. With no research to share once she became the nominee." — Paul Rivera, Democratic Strategist
The report's most striking revelation concerns a pronounced disparity in political support and resource allocation within the Biden White House. Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, the White House reportedly requested the DNC to conduct polling to ascertain how then-First Lady Jill Biden could best support President Joe Biden politically. Conversely, the report found that no such research or dedicated polling was conducted for Vice President Kamala Harris for years.
This lopsided investment created a significant strategic vacuum. When President Joe Biden ultimately decided to step back from the race in July 2024, his own Vice President, Kamala Harris, found herself without crucial polling data, tested messaging, or a foundational research base to launch a viable presidential campaign. Rivera characterized this oversight as a "massive missed opportunity." He noted that Harris was simultaneously tasked with navigating complex and often politically challenging issues, such as immigration, without the necessary strategic insights.
Rivera's report highlighted the immediate consequences of this oversight: "As a result, at the moment of the candidate switch the polling team discovered there was no self-research on the Vice President to guide the development of the research instruments." He underscored the gravity of the situation, stating, "An incumbent Vice President. With no research to share once she became the nominee." This strategic void necessitated a frantic scramble, with three emergency polls rushed into the field immediately after President Biden's announcement. Rivera concluded that the years lost in preparation were irreplaceable.
The report suggests that earlier strategic engagement with the Vice President could have yielded broader benefits. Rivera wrote, "Had the White House explored and evaluated ways to leverage Kamala Harris earlier in the administration, perhaps it would have improved the President’s standing, and it certainly could have helped prepare her to lead the ticket."
Beyond the lack of dedicated polling, the autopsy also critiqued the Biden administration for not doing enough to bolster Vice President Harris's public image, particularly on the contentious issue of immigration. The report noted that the Trump campaign effectively branded her as the administration’s "border czar," a label that Republicans consistently used throughout the campaign as migrant concerns dominated voter sentiment. Democrats, the report contends, never mounted an effective rebuttal.
Rivera's analysis extended to broader communication failures, asserting that they ran deeper than just one damaging nickname. He stated, "The national campaign did not effectively drive Trump’s negatives, and the White House did not effectively support Vice President Harris over three and a half years to improve her standing before the candidate switch."
The DNC document also cast a critical eye on the "Bidenomics" branding strategy. It concluded that directly associating President Biden's name with his economic agenda backfired as American consumers grew increasingly frustrated with rising costs for groceries and daily essentials.
Furthermore, the report highlighted a "very effective" advertisement disseminated by the President Trump campaign that left Vice President Harris without a strong counter-response. The ad featured video footage of Harris expressing support for taxpayer-funded gender-affirming surgeries for prison inmates, concluding with the tagline, "Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you." According to the report, pollsters believed Harris was "completely boxed in" by the ad, as the footage contained her own words, and the campaign lacked an effective strategic answer.
The document also contained a stark warning: had President Biden remained in the race following his widely criticized June 2024 debate performance, Democrats could have faced even more severe down-ballot consequences. Dial-testing conducted during that debate reportedly confirmed voter suspicions regarding the President’s condition. President Biden became the first sitting president to withdraw from a re-election campaign since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968, leaving Vice President Harris with approximately 107 days to construct a national operation against a President Trump campaign that was fully staffed, funded, and battle-tested.
DNC Chair Ken Martin initially resisted releasing the report but reversed course after mounting pressure from within the party. He later conceded that the decision to withhold the document had itself become a damaging distraction, creating a secondary crisis on top of the primary issues the report intended to address. CNN subsequently published the report, including DNC annotations disputing certain claims. The document also notably lacks key sections, such as a conclusion, an executive summary, and "Notes for the reader." The release has intensified an intraparty blame game as Democrats grapple with the report's findings and the question of accountability for the strategic failures it describes.
