Why Was There No Mention of Israel or Gaza in The DNC's Autopsy Report

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]to another topic that I'd love to discuss on today's episode, which is the DNC's autopsy report, as you mentioned, on the 2024 presidential election. Uh, it has a little bit of a weird path towards the public. I don't want to get too deep into the weeds about it, but essentially this is a report on why Kla Harris and the Harris campaign lost the presidential election commissioned by the DNC chair, Ken Martin. It was put together by this uh Democratic strategist named Paul Rivera and then when they received it back they said it was not up to their standards. It's entirely unsourced. Uh elements of it apparently conflict other elements of it. Uh I have not specifically analyzed the parts that reporting is saying is contradictory. So I don't I don't want to repeat that without uh doing that exact reading myself. But even according to the DNC, they didn't. Martin says he doesn't want to release it. Didn't want to release it because it wasn't up to their standards. And then part of it leaked and then they didn't want to release it because it was around November 2025 and they didn't want to have negative press hurting people in the election cycle, which is fair, but also a pretty protracted timeline since then of releasing anything to the public. And now it's finally come out.

[00:01:19]uh Paul Rivera, who wrote it, is no longer working for the DNC, apparently.

[00:01:23]And so it's sort of been fully released, but with this caveat of we don't think this, this isn't what we believe. So I don't know if this is the DNC trying to have their cake and eat it, too. It does feel a little bit of like here's a shoddy report. Um, but if you do believe any of it, we're listening. Uh, it kind of is a way of throwing out ideas without taking accountability for them.

[00:01:44]And the other thing I will say is if this is not your correct and fully sourced and accountable report of what happened in 2024, I would like to see that report and I would wonder why that hasn't been commissioned and why we're having so many new stories about a single faulty report commissioned by one person but uh to one from one person. So it's an interesting path towards the public but uh it's been pretty thoroughly panned already. We're talking about this on today, Memorial Day. Our uh podcast Empressario and editor-inchief uh podf father Tim Fullerton wrote a little piece about it for find out social uh on his substack as well uh referring to it as anemic. And there's a lot of different parts about this that we can chop up and talk about. I obviously want to talk about the military angle, the Gaza angle of it all. I want to talk about the energy angle of it all. Uh, since we were just on the topic of Israel, Chad, how, according to this autopsy, did the Democratic Party's policy in Israel in Gaza affect the presidential election?

[00:02:53]Well, I mean, it's it's before I jump into that, I just want to say it's funny because we're both Matt, we have Matt as the energy expert and then myself as a foreign policy military and this this and I want Matt's views on the energy side here in a bit, but it's interesting because there was nothing on either really substantive on energy that I saw that was I mean they had they kind of kind of had the clean energy transition and stuff, but then also on the foreign policy there was it was essentially zero. They didn't me not only did they just kind of not gloss over Israel, Gaza, things like that.

[00:03:27]They didn't even say the words. There was no mention of Gaza, Palestine, Israel, no uh discussion of whatever side of the the fence you're on on the the genocide issue, if it whether it is a genocide, you agree with it, or whether it's not, you don't agree with it. They didn't even take a stance either way. They just didn't they were like, "We're not even going to mention it." And so one of the biggest problems is I I think Michigan was lost because of Gaza and they didn't they weren't willing to discuss it.

[00:04:00]>> Mention Michigan feels like huge omission because that's a that was a an electoral like a ballot based campaign to submit blank ballots. That's >> you could say oh indirectly it hurt us in other ways but we're literally talking about people casting blank ballots. To not mention that there was a voting phenomenon going on in your electoral autopsy feels like a complete >> negligence. One something like a 100,000 uncommitted voters and in Dearbornne's ArabAmerican and Muslim American community did not vote and Trump flipped Michigan by 80,000 votes. That is by all standards a complete failure in in that election. but also to not recognize that that I cannot fathom why they they decided to just omit that other than and to be harsh to the Democratic Party.

[00:04:51]Cowardice. They are scared of saying the words Israel, Gaza, genocide, Palestine, whatever. And and again, I say this, if if you if the Democrats want to come out on a stance that it is not a genocide, okay, we can have that debate, but at least come out somewhere. They're not coming out anywhere. They're just avoiding the issue. And that's how they ended up losing Michigan.

[00:05:16]>> Yeah. I mean, to not even mention it feels deliberately there's this sort of strategy, you know, and I I want to make sure as we frame this, okay, the issue in Michigan, right? I I feel like sometimes liberals, often liberals more towards the center, will look at something like that and go, "Okay, so those people in Michigan c cost us the election because they could have voted for for a Democrat, right? And they could have flipped Michigan, right?" And I think I understand the tendency to try to find a scapegoat to go, "Oh, these non- voters, these third party voters, these it's these people who didn't will themselves to do the right thing. Those citizens are the problem." But ultimately when it comes down to it, it's a it's a party issue. These people did not convince voters. They did not provide the confidence in voters that they cared about the issues that were important to them to the point where there was a statewide boycott effectively and they chose not to respond to that. They chose not to change their policy even after that. And you know, you can say, "Yeah, those people should have voted for Kamla." Do I wish they had? Maybe. She did promise no change in Gaza. I would rather we didn't have Trump and ICE and you know he's doing far more authoritarian things than she would have. Uh but you know do I wish they had they had voted Democrat? Sure. But do I blame them? No. I I think those people were making their voices heard in effectively the only way the system has made possible. And unfortunately I think a lot of people who are consistent Dem voters are just not not hearing their voices represented. And then you look at this autopsy and like you know the the issue we've been screaming about for you know in some cases two and a half years and for for many people for many years before that who were aware of it before October 7th. Uh it's not mentioned and so it's a it's it's a very clear we are not hearing you message.

[00:07:08]>> Well and that's why I wanted to ask Matt because it's one of the biggest things that we're dealing with even back in 2024 was clean energy fossil fuel.

[00:07:16]There's nothing in that. What do you What do you take from that, Matt, that they just flat out ignored energy policy in this in this document? It just blows my mind. They don't I don't know if they even know they did anything wrong with energy. Now, there's there's something that as an independent, what I see from the Democratic party is they believe that they can win elections by telling people what they believe.

[00:07:46]And that's not how you win elections.

[00:07:47]You win elections by telling people what you're going to do for them.

[00:07:51]>> But Democrats love to tell people what they believe. And that's great. And you can get a lot of votes that way. But you need to get enough votes to win elections. And you know, whether you like it or not, there's a lot of people that you need to vote for you that don't give two shits how you feel about certain issues and what you believe.

[00:08:09]They want to know specifically what are you going to do for them personally. You need all of those voters, too. And the first job of any party is to win an election. It's like you can't do any of the things that you believe in if you can't first win the election. So, that is my has long been my biggest sort of criticism of Democrats. Quit telling me what you believe. We all know what you believe. We've been hearing it for 20 years. Tell us what you're going to do for us. Right? because that's what those swing voters and those moderates, all those people that you need, right? But when it comes to energy, not a single mention during the entire Biden administration of the OPEC 2020 deal, I felt like the Democratic party took all of the allowed the Republican party to lay all of the responsibility for high gas prices and inflation and other things at Joe Biden's feet and they did nothing to fight back that narrative.

[00:09:10]>> They blamed it. all own oil companies, right? And look, I get it. A lot of Democrats, probably the vast majority of Democrats, hate oil companies. That's fine. But guess what? There's not an oil company on the ballot. And if you're wasting any of your breath talking about someone that's not on the ballot, then you're wasting your time. So, if you want to say, you know, oil companies are making record profits, that's fine. But follow that up with the specific thing that a Republican did or your opponent did. to highlight their culpability in that. And Democrats are really bad at that. Like they target different things that aren't on ballots. And if you're targeting if you're not at least targeting someone that's on a ballot every single day, then you're failing because that is what the rep Republican party is so good at. Every day we hear Biden, Biden, Biden. Right now, >> Biden did this and people are sick of hearing it. But you know what? It works.

[00:10:07]They've been doing it for 10 years and it's been working. It was Obama, Obama, Obama, now it's Biden. It works. And Democrats are not great at that. I don't know why, but uh no mention of the OPEC 2020 deal. No defense of, you know, why gas prices were high under the Biden administration. They blame oil companies and then they blame >> Go ahead. No, I was just going to say you're you're right that Democrats are strangely bad at negative reinforcement where they have this they have this language of civility thing that they only imply in certain situations and it feels like look personally there's a lot of things that the Republicans do where we say we're going to rise above oh we're not going to we're not going to expand the Supreme Court cuz what if they did that well we should have we had the power they're going to there are a lot of things where we just have to accept that that's reality and it's what Republicans are doing and liberals left us they need to do that too because those are the tools. Those are the playing cards right now. I do also believe that the MAGA movement and Trump's presidency has done some pretty serious damage to our national discourse and like you know just the level of you know I I'm I'm not I'm not a uh uh I believe high diction has a point because you should be able to articulate what you believe in specifically and that's really important in politics. Someone who speaks in high diction is not to me automatically untrustworthy. Uh but I am glad that we've broken some of that down. It is important that politics is more accessible. But it feels like the amount the the thing that the Democrats are in terms of discourse imitating from the right is not losing the pretense of civility or not losing the sort of Ivy League diction that keeps people out of politics, but it's losing it's they're doing, you know, IQ tests and race science and they're letting in faulty reasoning uh to support their release rather than bringing in uh actual, you know, like like like rather than having an actual uh uh broader conversation that allows more people at the table. It's this sort of civility only when it's for feedback we don't want. I agree with what you're saying about meeting people's needs versus saying what you believe. And I think part of that is sometimes those beliefs are empty because it's like saying we support these marginalized groups. It's like well are you going to support them when the police beat them up disproportionately? Are you going to support them socioeconomically so they can have prosperity? because, you know, they all think it's there's this issue of like, oh, we overcorrected. We corrected people about their pronouns too much. And I think I said this on another episode, but people don't care about that nearly as much when they're not poor and starving. People whose material needs have been met, people who feel heard are more willing to take part in social change. And there's also this weird sense of like, you know, if you say your voters don't want to get yelled at about pronouns, you're saying that trans people aren't your voters. And I feel like the Democrats are very like they are like this is what I believe in more often than material change. But the real problem is there is not stating your beliefs isn't bad. It's it's empty beliefs. It's beliefs without policy.

[00:13:16]And so like using you know identity politics using groups to be like I am the champion of the little people when it matters for rhetoric is is hollow if you don't support policies that help those people or if you don't listen to you know a massive group of people sticking up for a marginalized group in another country and you know your politics your politics there.

[00:13:37]>> Yeah.

[00:13:38]>> It's a huge messaging problem. Uh, and it it's like and I I the example I use is the Democrat and we kind of alluded to this. The Democratic Party loves to talk about foreign policy as if they're on a stage at the Council of Foreign Relations. It's a panel. They don't need to do that. They need to talk to the voters. And Matt was kind of it's perfect example when you kind of were alluding to this the just say why energy was so high. It was because of the postcoid boom and because of Russia. I mean I isn't I mean am I incorrect is that's I can we just get to the heart of it instead of being like well if you look at the charts in the book just hey guy in Iowa your gas is high because of Putin and postco yeah and you can do that and be civil and not get down in the mud like Donald Trump you don't have to call people names and you know you're fat you're ugly all that stupid childish just a mention of the OPEC 2020 deal you know just mention mention it. Um, and this is the year 2026.

[00:14:42]And the moment you mention it, everybody with a phone that doesn't know what it is is going to look it up and it's going to go across the social media landscape like wildfire. Like you don't have to get down and dirty and ugly. You can hold some civility and and keep some tradition. Like, you know, Democrats are big on, you know, like old traditions.

[00:15:03]You ever noticed that? Like, uh, how dare he do how dare he? And that's perfectly fine, right? But you can mention it. You can say, "Well, you know, it's because of this." And people will go find it and they will research it themselves. They don't need you to explain it to them step by step. Even though I did it a thousand times in 2022, um they'll go figure out what it is. And so I think they often miss that. Like just mentions of things catch fire on the internet and your your words are spread.

[00:15:37]It doesn't need to be toxic to have negative reinforcement, right? Like like that's a they've taken the wrong lesson from MAGA, which is like Trump is toxic, >> but negative reinforcement in the right with the right ethical backing works. I mean, you know, I can't you can't compare everything to Zoron Donnie because New York is not the world, but it's definitely a different strategy towards Democrats getting elected. They went pretty negative against his multiple opponents, Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams when he was still in the race. I mean much less so among the solidarity of the lower of the other candidates when there were still a lot in the race. But they went hard for Andrew Cuomo. They said this this guy is the reason these things happened. This person did these things negatively. He used your tax dollars literally used your tax dollars to pay for his sexual harassment lawsuits. They named those things and they kept naming them. And it feels like Democrats are afraid to do that on a national scale where it's like if if you're naming real problems, you don't just want to be scapegoating, of course, but yeah, you can talk about what Republicans are doing wrong and you are going to do differently. And like you said, not just what you believe in, but policy-wise, how you differentiate yourself from that.

[00:16:44]>> Well, and the problem is is uh it's that that's a great strategy if you have a strategy. They have no foreign policy strategy according to this document.

[00:16:55]They have no energy policy strategy.

[00:16:58]Just kind of broadly runs around the world. They didn't say anything. Not a word about Ukraine. Didn't talk about Zilinsky. Didn't talk about NATO posture. Didn't talk about the global security. Didn't talk about they China got one mention and its mention was the campaign of Sherrod Brown in Ohio where they lost that campaign. Democrats lost that campaign and they tried to say, "Well, Brown was hard tough on China."

[00:17:24]Okay, good. Great job. Yeah. So what?

[00:17:27]That's the problem. There's no unified democratic foreign policy right now. And it it comes from the leadership. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakee Jeff, Ken Martin, the DNC chair. They have produced no unified policy. The only person in the party that has any mention of any kind of foreign policy was AOC, Alexandria Okesio Cortez. When she went to the Munich Security Conference and said, "We need to understand the realities of the world." She articulated an anti- athoritarian uh democracyforward policy but also acknowledged the fact that the policies of the last 70 years the postworld war II policies they have not actually been the greatest for the working class and there needs to be some way to ensure that the workingass people the marginalized people as you were talking about Nat they're included in this uplift and not just not just having these broad nebulous discussions of like how we how we have to frame the fight when it comes to to Ukraine and and so it becomes a messaging problem and I tell when I tell people when I on the occasion I get asked I was like you need to start with why it impacts Americans that and it's all abroad Americans it's whether it's the soft power whether it's South America Africa Iran on doesn't matter.

[00:18:59]They need to understand how why should a family in suburban Cincinnati care. And if you cannot do that in a couple sentences, you're going to lose them. I mean, Iran is a prime example. This is a war nobody voted for and it's now causing gas prices. If we end it, oil goes back down. We stop spending trillions of dollars in the Middle East and instead maybe we can spend it on our roads so that you have better roads, better schools. Israel, Gaza, Americans are paying for this. We send $20 billion in military aid abroad while school districts lose teachers because they can't be a can't pay. Everything foreign has a domestic counterpart that we can lean on. China takes our jobs and Wall Street doesn't care. They make money off of it. Trump's tariffs were a part of that. That absolutely hurt hurt us. But we can't seem to as on the on the left, we can't seem to articulate that to someone here in Boisee, Idaho, so that they understand. I don't care. I can tell you probably 90% of the people here in Boisee don't care about what's going on in Iran other than the fact that they're at the pump. It it's a problem.

[00:20:09]And Taiwan, that's a huge one. That will be a huge problem for everyone if that maybe you don't know, but every car, phone, laptop has Taiwanese chips in it.

[00:20:19]And if we don't keep that safe and secure as a foreign policy matter, that's going to be like a a collapsing event for us. So everything the Republicans owned the Ukraine narrative.

[00:20:33]Stop spending money. Stop. We should stop spending money. My counter was, well, the last time we let a European dictator go unchecked, it took 60 million lives and hundreds of thousands of Americans to stop it. And it was a worldaltering event. And and then when you present it as well, we are degrading the Russian military for less than 5% of our own defense budget without losing a single American life.

[00:20:57]That means that you can project in the future saying, hey, we will not have to deal with World War II if we can support Ukraine now. And the problem is is I just don't think we have that messaging.

[00:21:09]the the Republicans are very good at that lowest common denominator. Whereas Democrats, I I worry, have this this mentality where they need to sound the smartest and they need to sound like, well, based on these studies from the Council of Foreign Relations. Yeah, absolutely. Use those studies, but get it to two sentence and tell it how it affects someone in middle America.

[00:21:31]I don't want this analysis I'm about to say to be true, but um if you want a very basic working model of why uh party line Dems don't care about energy policy or Gaza policy enough to bring it up in their own autopsy or to address it in the election season as they should all be doing.

[00:21:58]It's because they take an enormous amount of oil and uh energy money and money from APAC and >> if not oil money then massive corporate spending and I don't want to believe that this is the reason but when you intellectualize things and people tell people oh the issues are actually more complex than you realize and that's why we can't make material change that helps you uh and you don't focus on material change and the practical impact of these issues in people's lives could be a strategy of distracting from the fact that you don't actually care about those issues because you accept massive six to seven figure donations from the industries that are propped up by your policies that hurt people but help corporations. I don't want that to be the way that all Democrats are behaving and I don't think it's all Democrats.

[00:22:41]But when you filter a lot of this behavior through that framework, it makes a lot more sense. And I just don't think there's a future for a Democratic party where, you know, you're talking about my senator Schumer, you talk about Jeff, these guys have taken upwards of $2 million from Apac and the vast majority of their constituents are in in uh support of ending that support. So, it's, you know, I hate to say it, but some of this is just corporatism. Some of it's a performance of caring about your voters. And we got to get those the the corporatists out of the party.

[00:23:16]That's really what it comes down to. I want to believe that these guys are all trying to do the best thing or are out of touch or we are siloed off from the people and activists and DNC strategists are in two totally different silos and we don't know how to communicate. I want to believe that all of that is the reason that this is breaking down. But when you run it through the model of people are just making a lot of money and you just don't care. Uh it makes a lot of sense. And I'm not the only American who thinks that. I mean I'm not saying I'm not saying I'm not making this declaration. no one cares. But it's very easy to get voters burnt out with that kind of thinking. If that makes sense, if your if your party if your opposition parties uh actions can be filtered most easily through, well, they don't actually care about you until they need to win elections, then you're going to lose. Even if that's not true, like they need, it's like you're saying, Chad, they need to not only talk about what who who caused their problems, but like what have we done and how are we going to do that more to improve your lives? not just like, oh, promises, but like talking about how we build lit literal and social infrastructure for a better future and things that just can't be, you know, rolled back if a Republican's in office. But it doesn't seem based on this autopsy or based on the direction of a lot of campaigns right now that they're terribly interested in changing that strategy.