Democrats’ 2024 Autopsy Leaves Out Gaza, Raises More Questions Than Answers

The Democratic Party has finally released its long-delayed internal report on why Kamala Harris lost the 2024 presidential election to Donald Trump. But instead of offering a clear postmortem, the document landed with a different impression: unfinished, internally shaky and strangely selective about what it chose to confront.

Published Thursday by the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the 192-page audit came with missing sections, factual errors and visible annotations disputing parts of its own analysis. Entire portions, including the executive summary and conclusion, were absent altogether, replaced by the word “pending” and notes stating that the material “was not provided by author”.

Even DNC Chair Ken Martin openly distanced himself from the document.

“I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards. I don’t endorse what’s in this report, or what’s left out of it. I could not in good faith put the DNC’s stamp of approval on it,” Martin said.

“But transparency is paramount. So, today I am releasing the report as I received it – in its entirety, unedited and unabridged – with annotations for claims that couldn’t be verified.”

The report had already become a source of frustration within Democratic circles after months of delays and growing pressure from activists demanding answers about Harris’s defeat. But one omission immediately stood out above the rest: Gaza.

Despite the war dominating political debate throughout much of 2024, the words “Gaza” and “Israel” do not appear once in the report.

That absence is difficult to ignore considering how deeply the issue fractured parts of the Democratic coalition during the election cycle. The Biden administration continued backing Israel militarily throughout the war, approving nearly $18bn in support while repeatedly shielding Israel from ceasefire resolutions at the United Nations Security Council.

As civilian deaths mounted in Gaza and images from the territory flooded social media, anger among younger voters, Arab Americans and progressive Democrats intensified. Harris tried to present herself as supportive of diplomatic efforts to end the war, but she also repeatedly pledged continued military support for Israel.

Her campaign further alienated some activists after refusing to grant a speaking slot to a Palestinian American representative during the Democratic National Convention in August 2024.

Several polls later suggested that frustration over Gaza policy contributed significantly to depressed Democratic turnout. A 2025 survey from the IMEU Policy Project found that Gaza ranked among the top issues for voters who supported Joe Biden in 2020 but did not vote for Harris four years later.

Former Harris deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty recently acknowledged the political damage directly.

“For many voters watching the horrific, painful footage out of Gaza, it became a moral question – one we didn’t have a good answer for,” Flaherty wrote in The Bulwark publications on Substack.

“In ways that may not be reflected in a poll, it meaningfully reduced enthusiasm. As one person from the campaign told me: ‘We spent the entire election with a giant, rotting fish around our necks’.”

Beyond the missing Gaza discussion, the report itself repeatedly undermines its own authority. Throughout the document, editors inserted notes warning readers that certain claims contradicted public reporting or lacked supporting evidence.

Some errors were basic. The report incorrectly stated that Democrats won two gubernatorial races in 2024 when they actually won three. It also described Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as states that had “consistently and reliably voted for Democratic candidates” despite all three backing Trump in 2016.

Several outlets have reported that Democratic strategist Paul Rivera was selected to produce the report, although the document itself does not identify its authors.

Martin defended the decision to release it anyway, arguing that rebuilding the report from scratch would have required restarting the entire process.

“What I did ask for were actionable takeaways for the future. I wanted real, in-depth, specific recommendations to improve our allocation of resources, tech, data, organising, media strategy and more,” he said.

“When I received the report late last year, it wasn’t ready for primetime. Not even close.”

One of the clearer themes inside the audit is frustration with how the Biden White House handled Harris politically before the campaign ever began. The report argues that Harris was assigned responsibility for politically explosive immigration issues without sufficient preparation or strategic support.

Although Harris’s role focused on addressing the root causes of migration from Central and South America rather than border enforcement itself, Republicans successfully branded her as the administration’s “border czar” — a label that followed her throughout the election.

“The White House’s approach towards elevating the Vice President with a controversial issue brief without leveraging research into understanding how taxpayers and voters would react to the messengers of the Democratic administration was a massive missed opportunity,” the report said.

It also suggested Biden failed to fully integrate Harris into the administration’s political identity early enough.

“The idea that a prepared and supported Vice President could not have helped the President in the preceding three and a half years is a significant failure of imagination.”

The report also revisits another criticism that haunted the Harris campaign from the start: voters never developed a strong sense of what she actually stood for beyond opposing Trump.

“Harris struggled with definition beyond ‘not Trump’ and ‘prosecutor vs. felon.’”

According to the audit, focusing primarily on the danger of Trump was not enough during a period when voters were frustrated over affordability and the broader economic mood under Democratic leadership.

“The obvious contrast with Trump was not a sufficient motivator,” the document argued.

At the same time, the report claims Democrats failed to attack Trump effectively enough, dismissing the idea that voters had already fully absorbed his controversies.

“The retrospective job approval for Trump was too high and the campaign and allies failed to remind voters of his incompetence,” the document read.

The audit also singled out one of the election’s most controversial advertisements — a Republican attack ad featuring Harris expressing support for gender-affirming care for transgender inmates.

The commercial concluded with the line: “Kamala is for they/them’; President Trump is for you.”

According to the report, Democratic strategists believed the ad boxed the campaign into a politically difficult position because Harris’s own words were central to the attack.

“If the Vice President would not change her position – and she did not – then there was nothing which would have worked as a response,” the report said.