Autopsy report on why Democrats lost the election in 2024 released

Añadido: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]Well, after suffering a pretty devastating defeat in 2024, Democrats have really been struggling to make strides in national politics.

[00:00:08]>> Although they were struggling before the election, too, and that's part of the reason they lost. Of course, >> we for me.

[00:00:16]So, I I was, you know, obviously I'm a dem I'm the Democrat in the room, and I was I was really thinking at that time what was happening. And if you recall, Biden was the obviously presumptive candidate for president, right? But everybody knew he was slipping.

[00:00:32]Everybody knew he was fading. And then we had the debate. And it was a disaster. I know a lot of you Republicans were probably doing cartwheels at the time and going, "Okay." And so I thought, "Okay, Dems, you need to regroup." And instead they we messed around with Biden for a little bit longer thinking, "Oh, he can pull out of this." But there was no way.

[00:00:53]there was no way we were going to have Joe Biden as president because he just he just wasn't there. So to me, Holly, I just remember thinking, we've got to coales. We've got to get together. We've got to get a candidate in place. And they did that. They had the the convention and Kla Harris came forward.

[00:01:10]The problem is, and I'm looking at this report, they felt that she had not been promoted enough. That they were still, >> it was still Biden's party. It was still Biden's game. and even as vice president, she didn't get in the national spotlight enough. So, suddenly she's the the presumptive candidate.

[00:01:26]Well, she was the candidate.

[00:01:28]>> Um, but she didn't have the >> and what was it 107 days, I think that's the name of title of her book, something like that, >> right? And I thought actually I was optimistic. I I really did. I thought she's she's going to pull this out.

[00:01:39]There's a lot of enthusiasm about it. A lot of young people excited about it.

[00:01:42]But she didn't have she didn't have a lot of I don't know head start. I don't know how to describe it. But I'm looking at the report, they really felt like she she wasn't promoted enough jumping into that race.

[00:01:53]>> So, it's interesting to me a couple of things. So, 2024 feels like a long time ago, right?

[00:01:59]We're I mean we're almost to the midterms. So, it it's as they released this report, it was released for quote full transparency according to the DNC chair Ken Martin. He has fa faced months of anger over his decision to withhold it. But now that it's released, uh, they have disavowed the contents and say it cannot be independently ver we cannot independently verify the claims presented. It's not up to our normal standards. But I've also seen like yesterday I think I saw calls for him to step down because they hated the report.

[00:02:31]>> Yeah.

[00:02:31]>> Can't win for losing.

[00:02:33]>> The the report is not good. Reporting the can the race which was not good.

[00:02:39]Another thing that they noted that was not done well by the Democrats was uh well first I mentioned Kla Harris. They said that they really were hyping up Jill Biden and what she could do to support her husband and not so much what Kla Harris could do. They also said the Democrats didn't attack Trump forcefully enough. And I I don't know how they could have done better. But I think what the Democrats did looking back that they're concerned about was they basically thought Trump is he's he's a joke. I mean, let's we don't need to attack him. Let just let him talk. You know, when when they had the debate and he's talking about, hey, you we need to get immigrants out of here. They're eating the dogs. And and Kla Harris just starts laughing. Well, she should have called >> called him on it, you I mean, I think the Democrats missed an opportunity to start calling him on his his lies about about election interference, about immigration, so many things that he he could have been called out on.

[00:03:35]>> It's it feels like they did. I mean, from my perspective, so so one of the things that I think is difficult, and I think we saw this in the 2016 election, maybe is you can't just run against somebody, right? You have to put forward your own plans, right? So, You can't just be the party of I hate Trump and and expect that voters are going to say, "Well, me too." Right? But you have to say, "Here's our plan. Here's our policies. Here's how we are going to make things different. Here's how it can be morning in America." Again, that was Ronald Reagan, right? Running for something. I mean, at at least overall, that is what works better than just attack attack attack. and and Trump did an incredible job of boxing the Democrats in because you can't just say Trump's bad because Trump was saying the economy is bad. It's we're the worst in the world. Of course, that was completely untrue. The our economy was much stronger then than it is today. I'm going to say that as a Democrat. You might disagree, but but and Trump was saying, I'm going to, you know, gas prices are going to come down, food prices are going to come down, >> and we're not gonna get entangled in any >> We're not gonna get anywhere. I mean, everything he said was complete BS. And instead of calling him on it, the Democrats are saying, "No, we're doing fine." Well, Biden wasn't doing fine.

[00:04:51]And and Trump did a good job even though the economy was good of saying, "The economy is not good." And people believed it. And and to your point, exactly, Holly, Kla Harris was put on spot with the economy. What are you going to do? Well, President Biden's doing a good job and we're going to do this and this. No. No. We were listening to Kamla going, "You've got to have your own plan." Do you know one of the things that that Kla Harris said that now people can look back and say, "Oh, because she was saying, look, if President Trump gets elected, we're going to be engaged in new wars." And people are like, it happened to Mitt Romney, too, actually. No, no, no.

[00:05:29]You're such a wararmonger, scaremonger, blah, blah, blah. Well, it turned out that she was accurate. But, you know, here's one of the things that's interesting, too, that they call it an autopsy or a postmortem. That seems a is that normal harsh? Yeah. Who knows?

[00:05:43]>> I mean I I understand you got to look and review, but this autopsy is like that's sounds like >> Yeah. Like depressing.

[00:05:50]>> Like we we died. I mean felt like Yeah, we felt like that when when you know the House and the Senate and the presidency all went with the uh Republicans and of course the Supreme Court was already lined up that way. So we knew it was going to be a tough time. You know, I'll say this about the Democrats. I'm going to get myself in trouble here. They're not really doing a lot better now. I mean, the messaging still isn't occurring. And we're still sitting back going, "Okay, Trump's numbers are bad.

[00:06:18]Nobody likes Trump. More and more people are starting to dislike him. He's least popular president in history." And people are going, "Okay, what's your alternative? What What are you going to do?" And I think the Democrats are not lining that up very well. We need to get our act together. I think midterms should be good for us, but mostly by default because people are mad at the Republicans right now.

[00:06:39]>> Yeah. I mean, and that typically happens too with with uh midterms. Anyway, I I'll say this. I've seen some recent polling both on the midterms and uh prediction markets aside which also favor the Democrats. The actual legitimate polling organizations give Democrats better than a 75% chance of retaking the House and pretty close to that of retaking the Senate, which would be really interesting. But I also saw a very very early poll for 2028 for Democratic candidates. Guess who's on top?

[00:07:11]>> Kamla.

[00:07:11]>> Kamla by a long way. She got like 50% >> as she should be. She's positioned she's been pretty smart since the election and she's done a good job. And I think that Gavin Newsome has >> he was down like 24 25% >> pretty strong. I I think Pete Budajage would be good too. I mean just >> he was down even further than that.

[00:07:28]>> Cory Booker's my guy, but I don't know where he is on the thing. And I I mean the Democrats just need to get their act together. We'll see what they can do. Um and hopefully they learned a valuable lesson on I don't know if this autopsy was helpful or not, but