The Democratic Post-Mortem

“They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” That criticism of France’s royal family after the revolution could well apply to the Democrats after their defeat in 2024 — at least if they fail to heed the lessons of their loss. A post-mortem released today shows some signs of grappling with the reasons for President Trump’s victory. Yet the report comes at a time when the candidate who led the party to failure, Vice President Harris, is eyeing another run. The report’s concerns about the Democrats’ lurch to the left could help explain why the post-mortem has taken so long to see the light of day. The election, after all, was more than 18 months ago. One can imagine that the party would want a candid study of the 2024 debacle in order to shift course for the 2026 midterms and for the next presidential race in 2028. So feature the report’s criticism of the Democrats’ obsession with “identity politics.”Ms. Harris’s candidacy “wrote off rural America, assuming urban/suburban margins would compensate,” the report argues. Yet the “math doesn’t work,” the post-mortem warns. Democratic candidates “can’t lose rural areas by overwhelming margins and make it up elsewhere when rural voters are a significant share of the electorate.” To “reclaim leadership in the Heartland or the South, candidates must perform well in rural turf,” it cautions. “Show up, listen, and then do it again,” is how the report, drafted by a Democratic consultant, Paul Rivera, frames the task for the party. The report flags “a persistent inability or unwillingness to listen to all voters.” The post-mortem proposes “a renewed focus on the voters of Middle America and the South” whose denizens “have come to believe they are not included in the Democratic vision of a stronger and more dynamic America for everyone.” Catering to the cultural liberalism of coastal Americans, the report contends, is preventing the Democrats from connecting with middle America. “Millions of Americans are suffering from poor access to healthcare, manufacturing and job losses, and a failing infrastructure,” the report laments, but are “persuaded to vote against their best interests because they do not see themselves reflected in the America of the Democratic Party.”This assessment is borne out on a host of issues in which the Democrats seem to have lost their way. Take, say, the party’s rising hostility toward America’s mideast ally, Israel. On immigration, too, the Democrats seem to now view as anathema the idea of an enforceable border. There’s too little pushback against the left’s militant policies on transgender issues, including a failure to respect the rights of parents to raise their children as they see fit. The post-mortem’s insights would seem to dictate a turn toward a centrist standard-bearer to lead the party in the 2028 election. So it’s hardly promising to see that Ms. Harris is gearing up for another run, as NBC News reports is signaled by her recent hiring of the Democratic National Committee’s Gabriel Uy. If Ms. Harris pushed for a release of the post-mortem to clear her name after her defeat in 2024, the document does not seem to bear that out.A healthy democracy requires two functional and accountable political parties — including a viable opposition. So even as these columns generally favor the GOP on most policy questions, there’s no doubt of the upside if the Democrats chart a course back to the center and present a persuasive platform to voters. The prospects for the world’s oldest political party, and America, too, could depend on profiting from the lessons of 2024.

The Democratic Post-Mortem

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