There’s been plenty of debate, and plenty of jokes, about the incomplete autopsy of the 2024 election released by the DNC. In this week’s “Meeting the Moment,” Anat and I took a look under the coffin lid (so to speak) to reveal why these kinds of autopsies exist in the first place.
I’ve been professionally involved in every federal election since 1976. As almost anyone who has been involved at that level could tell you, the most important, and unbiased, post-election autopsies are not publicly available. Those that know don’t talk, and those that talk don’t know.
And why would we talk? Why would we spend millions of dollars to learn how to run better campaigns, only to publish those learnings for anyone to read, including our opponents? Nike doesn’t send out a press release about why their last ad campaign failed, and if they do, everyone knows that releasing it is for PR purposes. Same deal here. It’s not that everything publicly available is BS, it’s that without seeing everything, there’s no way to know.
So what are the public autopsies for? They’re about intraparty power struggles. They’re not about what Democrats should say in the next election cycle. They’re about who Democrats should listen to — and more to the point, who they should hire to consult. By the same token, they’re also about who should take the most blame for the previous losses (and thus who shouldn’t be listened to, or hired, again).
There’s a lot more detail, and plenty of caveats, on all of that in our conversation.
And speaking of Nike, Anat and I discussed how the big takeaway of the most candid autopsies we’ve read — like this one at The Bulwark by Rob Flaherty, Harris’s deputy campaign manager — is that the Harris campaign basically lacked a coherent brand. This is a point that Anat and I hammer often. Candidates and political parties need to tell a consistent and compelling story about themselves — ideally, a story that people can see themselves belonging to and being a part of. That’s what Trump has offered his supporters, and it’s the main reason (other than Roberts Court interference, or elected Democrats failing to do what was necessary to hold Trump accountable) that he’s stayed afloat despite so many scandals and criminal indictments.
We also discussed why Ken Paxton didn't just beat, but demolished, John Cornyn in Tuesday's runoff, despite Cornyn having narrowly led in the March primary. We’ll have more confirmation on this when the voter files are updated, but my best guess is that the March primary voters included proportionately more four-of-four regular voters, who are often more “mainstream” Republican, whereas this runoff drew much more MAGA energy.
Paxton’s win gives James Talarico a big opportunity. Anat counseled that he should respond to attacks like “Tala-freak-o” by confidently standing up for his own values, while at the same time calling out MAGA for picking our pockets and being “pedophile protectors.” Encouragingly, Talarico did almost exactly that — calling out Ken Paxton for letting an admitted child rapist back on the streets: “If Ken Paxton is worried about freaks, he should stop giving Epstein-style sweetheart deals to pedophiles.”
For more on the Democratic Party’s brand problem — and some actually-useful free advice on how to fix it — check out:
