NEWNow you can listen to Fox News articles!
Democrats continue to win at the ballot box as the party works to win back members of Congress in the midterm elections.
But despite a string of electoral victories and overperformance in the more than 15 months since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, the party’s image remains underwater in public opinion polls and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) finds itself trailing rival Republican National Committee in fundraising, a key measure of party strength.
To make matters worse, the DNC is facing continued calls to release its internal audit of the party’s issues in the 2024 election, when Democrats have lost the presidency and the Senate majority and failed to win control of the House.
Among those calling on the DNC to make public its report on what went wrong for Democrats in 2024 is former Vice President Kamala Harris, who was named party president two years ago.
FLIP FLOPS DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE, PULLS THE PLUG ON ITS 2024 ELECTION ‘AUTOPSY’
Former Vice President Kamala Harris, center, speaks to customers as they stop by Crave restaurant before a South Carolina Democratic Party fundraiser Wednesday, April 15, 2026, in Greenville, SC. (Meg Kinnard/AP Photo)
Harris, who is considering another bid for the White House in 2028, recently told donors that he believes the DNC should make the autopsy public. The news was first reported by NBC News and confirmed by Fox News Digital.
A source with knowledge said Harris had not yet discussed the autopsy with DNC Chairman Ken Martin, and that the former vice president did not know in advance of Martin’s decision in December to keep the postmortem of the 2024 election under wraps.
Martin ordered the report shortly after he was named DNC chairman early last year.
Democratic Party officials interviewed more than 300 Democrats in all 50 states for the report, which Martin promised would examine the party’s mistakes in 2024 and provide a blueprint for victory going forward.
There was controversy surrounding the report when it was put together, after reports last summer said the autopsy would skip the analysis of whether former President Joe Biden should have run for office in 2024 and would pass judgment on important decisions made by Harris and his team, after he took over Biden’s position as suggested by the party with more than three months left until the 2024 election.
Throughout the process, Martin has insisted on calling the report an “autopsy,” as he noted that the Democratic Party was not dead. Instead he labeled the report an “after-action review.”
But in December, weeks after Democrats scored a landslide victory in the 2025 election, the party announced it would not release the report.
Martin, in a statement at the time, said releasing the report would be a “distraction” from the party’s “primary efforts” to return congressional officials to midterms.
DEMOCRACY ’26: STAY INFORMED WITH THE FOX NEWS ELECTION HUB
Democratic National Committee chairman Ken Martin speaks to party members at the DNC summer meeting in Minneapolis, Minn., on Aug. 25, 2025. (Paul Steinhauser – Fox News)
In explaining his decision, Martin wrote, “We have completed a comprehensive review of what happened in 2024 and we are already acting on what we learn. And we are winning again – even in areas that have not been green in decades. In our discussions with stakeholders from all over the world of the Democratic ecosystem, we are aligned with what is important, and that is learning from the past and winning the future.”
“Here is our North Star: does this help us win? If the answer is no, it is a distraction from the core work,” he stressed.
But the decision of the DNC chairman was criticized not only by Republicans but also by some Democrats.
“They are trying to post-mortem the election that gave us Trump 2.0. If party leaders don’t take the necessary steps to rebuild ourselves into a successful coalition, we will take it into our own hands,” warned former DNC Vice Chair David Hogg in a statement. social media posts at that time.
Hogg, a gun-control crusader who was elected DNC vice chairman as Martin won election as chairman, stepped down last summer after angering party leaders with his efforts to support primary challenges to what he called “sleep-driving” seniors, who have long held sway in safe, blue-collar districts.
Dan Pfeiffer, former senior adviser to then-President Barack Obama and host of the popular progressive podcast “Pod Save America,” social networks criticizing the movement.
“This is a terrible decision that caution and carelessness has brought us to this time,” Pfeiffer wrote.
His podcast host and fellow Obama alum Jon Favreau called the DNC flip-flop “unreal” and “confusing.”
“The real situation for the DNC is that if the public knew more about what the Democrats did wrong in the last election, it would hurt the party’s chances in the next election,” Favreau wrote in X. “How does this rebuild trust between party insiders and grassroots activists and organizers?”
Martin last month made an appearance on “Pod Save America” to push back against the criticism.
DNC CHAIR SLAMMED BY LIBERAL PODCAST HOST NOT TO RELEASE 2024 POLITICAL FINANCE REPORT
“We’ve been putting that out,” Martin said when asked if the DNC would release a summary of the report. “The truth is that we are not hiding the ball on this. We have been sharing those things for a long time. There is no smoking gun here.”
Martin noted that we were “briefing,” as he pointed to information from a report the DNC shared with Democratic stakeholders.
Harris isn’t the only potential 2028 Democratic presidential contender asking the DNC to make the full report public.
“Yes, release the autopsy,” said Sen. New Jersey’s Cory Booker this past weekend on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “They should do that,” the senator said as he pointed to the DNC.
But Booker, who ran for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination won by Biden and is considering another run in 2028, said it was important for his party not to dwell on the past.
Rotimi Adeoye, a former Democratic operative who works as a columnist for the New York Times, argued in a social media post that “the mistake the DNC made is that they would release the report in early spring, whatever is in it, you get two weeks of bad publicity, and then Trump does something stupid and everyone forgets.”
“Now it feels like there’s something hidden, which makes it even more interesting,” he said.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS PROGRAM
A person familiar with the DNC’s strategy told Fox News Digital that because of all the attention on the autopsy, “they’re going to be forced to release something.”
The person, who asked to remain anonymous to speak freely, said the ongoing story is a distraction for the DNC as the midterms approach, adding that “it’s not worth talking about.”
The DNC pointed to Martin’s earlier comments when contacted by Fox News Digital.
