A Democratic audit of what went wrong in the 2024 presidential election will largely ignore actions taken by the campaign that passed from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris, according to a New York Times report.
The “after-action review,” commissioned by the Democratic National Committee (DNC), will not examine the timing of Biden’s decision to step down as the Democratic nominee, six people with knowledge of a report draft told the Times.
It also does not question whether Harris was the best candidate to replace Biden or evaluate her key campaign decisions, such as painting the election as a choice between democracy and fascism.
In other words, the report is projected to neglect the questions that dominated public discussion after election day as Democrats were trying to understand how Donald Trump managed to return to office.
Instead, the insiders revealed, the report will examine actions taken by groups associated with the Democrats, considering the election as a whole and not focusing on the race for the presidency.
“The DNC’s post-election review is not a finger-pointing exercise, it’s about bringing together Democrats across the ecosystem to adopt an actionable playbook to win, not just for 2026 and 2028, but to dominate for cycles to come,” DNC spokesperson Rosemary Boeglin told the Times.
“Democrats are clear-eyed about the challenges facing the party—many of which are rooted well before the 2024 cycle—and it requires all of us to make structural changes in how we run campaigns,” she added.
The report is expected to place blame on Future Forward, a Democratic super PAC, arguing that not enough of the $560 million was invested into attacking Trump and that too much of the advertising focus was on television.
In the months since Trump returned to office, Biden has continued to face questions about his mental acuity and his decision to remain as the Democratic nominee for as long as he did. He only dropped out on July 21, 2024, nearly a month after his disastrous debate showing against Trump.
Biden is now the target of a Republican-led investigation into whether he was actually the individual calling the shots while he was president, especially when it comes to his use of an autopen to sign important documents.
Biden has denied claims pushed by Trump and others that he did not have the mental acuity to make decisions as president.
“I made every single one of those,” Biden told the Times in an interview this week, referring to pardons he signed. “I understand why Trump would think that, because obviously, I guess, he doesn’t focus much. Anyway, so—yes, I made every decision.”
