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Democrats don’t need an autopsy to know what they did wrong

There’s been no bitter public reckoning — but there is a quiet consensus among party elites. Is it right?

If you’re looking for insights into why Democrats lost in 2024, you won’t find many in the DNC’s disavowed “autopsy,” which was released after much pressure Thursday. The incomplete and error-ridden report, written by a friend of DNC chair Ken Martin, offers various takes on the election but little convincing evidence, and avoids many contentious issues entirely, like immigration and Israel.

There haven’t really been any dramatic attempts by Democrats to change their party brand going forward, either. There’s been no policy platform like Newt Gingrich’s 1994 “Contract with America” to guide candidates around the country. Disparate primary battles haven’t congealed into a nationwide movement like the 2010 Tea Party. Nor has there been a high-profile push from party leaders for Democrats to repudiate Joe Biden’s unpopular record, and mostly the same people are in charge.

But behind closed doors, among Democratic elites, a reckoning has indeed taken place — and a quiet consensus about at least part of the path forward has emerged.

The most obvious midterm plan is a laser focus on affordability and on criticizing President Donald Trump, evident in campaigns across the country. Leftists like Zohran Mamdani and party leaders like Hakeem Jeffries agree that talking about cost-of-living issues is their best approach, even if they have different variations on that message and the policies they’re recommending.

Then, more subtly, Democrats have also recalibrated on various other issues where many in the party believe they’d gotten too far out of sync with mainstream voters over the past decade — most notably, border security, crime, climate change, and identity issues.

But the recalibration typically hasn’t involved messy scenes where Democrats throw these constituencies under the bus. Instead, it’s played out with candidates quietly backing away from or downplaying stances now viewed as excessively reminiscent of the “Peak Woke” years — in hopes those issues are simply less........

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