DNC AUTOPSY TOO MODERATE TO HANDLE
Buried report explicitly invoked 1989 centrist movement, blames identity politics
After months of speculation, today’s revelation of the Democratic National Committee’s 2024 postmortem reveals a surprising truth: the report is filled with recommendations that the party move to the center, making controversial claims for a party that is now majority-liberal and heavily influenced by progressive advocacy groups.
Many of the findings validate our Deciding to Win report, the defining autopsy.
Explicitly invokes the 1989 course correction led by moderate and conservative Democrats to “reclaim the vital center” and be “less about race” and less about “pie-in-the-sky narratives.”1
Called for more separation from Biden on immigration. Page 72
The report elevates pollster concerns that Kamala Harris needed “breaks” with the Biden Administration to win, and that “attempted differentiation on immigration” was “too little, too late.
Cited a rejection of “identity politics” as key factor for successful candidates in case studies on North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada. Page 22; Page 38
The DNC report, titled Build to Win, echoes many of the themes of Welcome’s Deciding To Win postmortem and upcoming WelcomeFest, the largest annual gathering of centrists themed Building to Win. The echoes may have been too loud.
Most Democrats now admit voters distrust the party on both cultural issues and the basics of government, like immigration and public safety. But most won’t admit that voters have good reason not to trust the party: Democrats ran to the left on every measure since 2012, from bill sponsorship to the party platform. Voters noticed, and didn’t like it. That’s the key takeaway from Deciding to Win, and possibly a reason the DNC’s own autopsy was not released.
More on Ron Brown here, from a 1989 LA Times article on a DLC meeting: “Brown, the Democrats’ first black chairman, has long been closely linked to the party’s traditional liberal base in the North and industrial Midwest, while the conference was sponsored by the Democratic Leadership Council, a group of moderate-to-conservative officeholders. So Brown’s suggestion that Democrats need to broaden their horizons served as striking reinforcement for the notion that dominated the meeting: the Democratic need to regain support among middle-class Americans if they are to have a fighting chance to regain the presidency in 1992.”