DNC Autopsy Author Says Party Omitted Key Section From Public Draft: NYT

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Paul Rivera, the author of the Democratic National Committee’s autopsy on why the party lost the 2024 presidential election, said the lengthy draft the DNC made public in May left out an important section, The New York Times reported on Monday, as the party continues to grapple with internal tensions ahead of the crucial midterm elections.

Rivera told The Times he hand-delivered the chapter to embattled DNC chairman Ken Martin in January, but Martin denies that ever happened.

“This alleged report section was not in any binder I reviewed,” Martin told the outlet.

“If we had this in May, we would have released it with the rest of the report,” he added.

Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin denied Paul Rivera’s allegations that the party left out a key chapter from the autopsy report he hand-delivered to Martin in January.

The chapter, titled “What Happened In 2024,” which was published in full by the Times, pointed to former President Joe Biden’s decision to pursue reelection as well as the financial situation of Democratic campaign operatives as some of the contributing factors to the party’s failure to win.

Rivera writes that Democrats’ better-than-expected performance in the 2022 midterms led them “to believe they were stronger than they actually were” and also prompted Biden to make the “consequential” call to run for a second term.

“Is there a single point of failure for 2024?” Rivera asked. “Perhaps it is a decision of the President to seek re-election instead of passing the torch, but Democrats do not have a time machine to go back and change his decision, and the particular circumstances of the 2023-2024 political landscape will likely never happen again.”

The passage released by The Times also says that many of the people who worked at the highest levels of the party and the presidential campaign itself were either too wealthy or privileged to grasp the struggles of everyday Americans.

“They missed important signals about why people were frustrated with Democrats, who seemed not to appreciate or understand their situation,” the chapter reads.

This latest dispute, revealed by The Times, comes as Martin is under growing pressure to step down over the party’s dire financial situation, among other issues, with the key November midterm elections looming.

Martin has also faced sharp criticism over the handling and the quality of the report Rivera authored. While Martin originally pledged to publish the autopsy, he backtracked before eventually releasing it to CNN, acknowledging it was deeply flawed.

The autopsy included several spelling and factual errors and lacked proper attribution for the evidence the author used to reach his conclusions. Key staffers in the campaigns of Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris were also never interviewed.

Read the full New York Times report here.

Author of Democrats’ 2024 Autopsy Says Party Left Out Key Chapter - The New York TimesKent Nishimura for The New York Times

## [Author of Democrats’ 2024 Autopsy Says Party Left Out Key Chapter](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/us/politics/democrats-autopsy-2024-election-dnc.html?ref=o