The DNC postmortem is a shambles — but Democrats think they know what they did wrong last time

If you’re looking for insight into why Democrats lost in 2024, you won’t find many on DNC rejects “autopsy,” which was released after much pressure on Thursday. An incomplete and error-ridden, written report and a friend of DNC chairman Ken Martin, offers a variety of opinions about the election but little convincing evidence, and avoids many controversial issues altogether, such as immigration and Israel.

There haven’t been any major attempts by Democrats to rebrand their party going forward, either. There has never been a policy platform like Newt Gingrich’s 1994 “Contract with America” ​​to guide candidates across the country. The grassroots battle hasn’t moved into a nationwide movement like the Tea Party of 2010. Nor has there been a high-profile push from party leaders for Democrats to reject Joe Biden’s unpopular record, and those same people are in charge.

But behind closed doors, among Democratic elites, the reckoning has taken place — and a quiet consensus about at least part of the way forward has emerged.

The most obvious midterm agenda is a laser focus on affordability and criticism of President Donald Trump, evident in campaigns across the country. Leftist members like Zohran Mamdani and party leaders like Haeem Jeffries agrees that talking about cost-of-living issues is their best approach, even if they differ on the message and the policies they propose.

Then, more subtly, Democrats have also rehabilitated several other issues where many in the party believe they have drifted too far from ordinary voters over the past decade — notably, border security, crime, climate change, and identity issues.

But the realignment usually hasn’t involved messy events where Democrats throw these constituencies under the bus. Instead, it’s being played out by candidates quietly endorsing or disparaging positions that are now viewed as overly reminiscent of the “Peak Woke” years — in the hope that those issues are irrelevant.

Mamdani, for example, rejected his past words calling the police “racists” during his mayoral race. In Texas, James Talarico responded to an old clip showing his previous campaign “No meat” policy. with a picture of him drawing on a turkey leg. And in Virginia last year, Abigail Spanberger he stayed is unknown about the school’s policies on transgender students, bathrooms and sports, fending off his opponent’s efforts to put him down on the topic.

This more restrained approach to changing the party’s image could pay off in the midterms, which are usually more polls for the incumbent. But critics question whether more should be done to improve the Democrats’ standing, for the midterms and subsequent elections.

“Nothing has been done to forcefully move away from what everyone generally agrees is a series of bad mistakes,” said Lakshya Jain, pollster and director of data for the liberal publication. argument, he told me. “Instead, the idea is, let the changing environment of the issue save us.”

The tacit agreement of the democrats

Immediately after Kamala Harris lost in 2024, a heated debate arose about whether she and the party as a whole were very left on important issues and out of step with what ordinary voters believed.

A year and a half later, my conversations with people in and around Democratic Party politics suggest that there is much agreement they had.

“I’ve been on the conference circuit basically since the beginning of March, and you can feel it,” Tré Easton, vice president of the center-left think tank Searchlight Institute, told me. “People — not just moderates, but mainstream Democrats — understand that what we were doing in 2024, which caused us to lose the popular vote for the first time in 20 years, we can’t do that again.”

Indeed, among party elites, there is a widespread belief that Democrats need to worry more about the average voter — rather than progressive activists and nonprofits. groups who had great influence in the party in the last ten years.

“The biggest lesson we’ve had to relearn is not to get caught up in these culture wars,” Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has long been deeply involved in Democratic politics, told me. “But I think there’s a lot more discipline this time.”

But there hasn’t been a bitter break with progressives — instead, these changes have emerged as more of a “change in vibe,” as Democratic elites and politicians move toward a new consensus on how to act.

Activist groups have been somewhat silenced as Democrats have changed their rhetoric on these issues. The intense factional arguments are even more intense on the topic of Israelwhere the party has been moving to the left, and also the average voter. How far to go when it comes to holding back ICE – or stopping it altogether – is a a matter of dispute. But while there is considerable disagreement among Democrats on various social and economic issues, there has never been anything like a party civil war.

Moreover, despite their anti-establishment nature, most Democratic voters seem to be on board with some of the consensus of public opinion after 2024. New York Times/Siena poll this month they asked Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents whether the party should move to the center or to the left to win in 2028. 52 percent said they should move to the center, compared to just 25 percent who wanted to move to the left. (Eighteen percent said they should stay where they are.)

But have they done enough?

While there is broad agreement that the party is in good shape for the midterms because of Trump’s high approval numbers, moderate critics question how much has changed — and whether this consensus can last long.

“The Biden administration said they would put racial equity at the center of everything the federal government does,” said Matt Yglesias, a former Vox colleague who he has argued aloud that the Democratic Party should manage those issues. “I haven’t heard anything like that from a Democrat in years. But have they just learned to keep these things quiet? Or have they changed their views on things?”

Easton of the Searchlight Institute also thought more needed to be done. “The Democratic Party doesn’t have an energy policy or an immigration policy right now, and that’s not sustainable,” he said. “Partly, that’s because we don’t have a national leader to dictate what that is. But also, we still have groups that are trying to hold on to the policy agreements that were made over the last decade or so.”

The truth, however, is that internal party debate is painful and dangerous, and Democrats tend to seek compromise behind closed doors rather than publicly.

And one problem for moderates advocating for more balance is that, if the Democrats run away in 2026, the current cautious approach will be confirmed.

“To me, the risk is to come to the conclusion that they have done enough,” Yglesias said.

For example, in the Senate, candidates like Talarico could put some red states in play amid a rough environment for Republicans this year. But Senate geography is a challenge for Democrats in the long run, because, Yglesias said, “the party’s traditional position is outside the Overton Window” in many red states — that is, they still have a lot left in those states’ voters.

Then there is the presidency. “I don’t think a single Democrat or swing voter can tell you what (Michigan senator and potential 2028 presidential candidate) Elissa Slotkin is different from Joe Biden,” Jain said. “I don’t think there’s a plan to address that. I think that will reduce the chances of winning.”

But, Jain also told me, he thought that if Trump’s approval rating stayed this low in 2028, the Democrats’ chances would be pretty good. “There is no precedent for an incumbent party to win an election when their president is at 37 percent. So even if the Democrats do nothing – it could be enough to win.”