The Democratic National Committee didn’t release a critical draft chapter as part of its report on the state of the party after the failures of the 2024 election, according to the report’s author.
Democratic strategist Paul Rivera told The New York Times that he hand-delivered a binder containing the chapter, entitled “What Happened in 2024,” to DNC Chair Ken Martin during a meeting in January.
The chapter, which Rivera shared in full with the paper, questions Joe Biden’s decision to seek reelection, scrutinizes how the party lost support among voters of color and takes aim at the influence of allegedly out-of-touch political consultants that got “generationally wealthy off politics.”
“In every other aspect of professional life, when you fail, you look back to understand what went wrong — not in politics and certainly not in this party,” Rivera told the paper. “The inability to accept responsibility gets in the way of change, reform, growth and progress, and that’s a huge missed opportunity for the party.”
The DNC strongly denied ever receiving the chapter.
“As we said at the time, in May we released all of the draft report as we’d received it from the author,” DNC Chair Ken Martin told The Independent in a statement. “If we had this in May, we would have released it with the rest of the report.”
“To the best of our knowledge, this alleged report section was never shared with nor reviewed by the DNC — and we did not locate it in an extensive search of our files,” he added.
The drama over the autopsy is the latest twist in an increasingly public fight over the state of the party.
In December, Martin said the postmortem would not be released, calling it a “distraction.”
Under pressure from activists and political commentators, the DNC released a highly annotated draft version in May, though Martin disavowed its contents.
“When I received the report late last year, it wasn’t ready for primetime. Not even close,” Martin said in a statement at the time, adding that neither he nor the DNC endorsed its conclusions.
Critics claimed the released draft report left out other key details.
The postmortem report on the 2024 election did not mention questions regarding whether the Biden administration’s stance on Gaza hurt its campaign chances, nor did it detail the impact of concerns over Biden’s mental fitness.
The party, and Martin’s leadership, are under heavy scrutiny, with the DNC reportedly $2 million in debt and facing a pause from major donors.
Martin allegedly feels his time is up and has presided over a tense atmosphere inside the DNC. He is accused of throwing a phone onto a staffer’s desk, prompting a conversation with human resources, The New York Times previously reported.
The DNC declined to comment on the alleged incident.
Democrats are forecast to retake the House and potentially the Senate in the 2026 midterms this fall, but the party remains deeply divided over issues ranging from support for Israel to democratic socialist candidates.