Release of the entire autopsy would likely be a blow to Harris’s chances of becoming president in January 2029. It reportedly concludes that Harris’s unwavering support for U.S. weapons shipments to Israel was a significant factor in her loss to Donald Trump.
By Norman Solomon
More than four months after Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin announced that he was breaking his promise to release its autopsy report on the 2024 election, the decision remains highly controversial. Arguments swirl around whether it’s wise to proceed without public scrutiny of what went wrong during the last presidential campaign. But scant attention has focused on how hiding the autopsy provides an assist to Kamala Harris, who currently leads in polling of Democrats for the party’s 2028 nomination.
As Harris eyes another run, she has a major stake in the DNC continuing to keep the autopsy under wraps – and has a lot to lose if it reaches the light of day. She must feel gratified when Martin defends keeping the autopsy secret, saying that the party should not “relitigate” the 2024 election and claiming that release of the 200-page document would result in “navel-gazing.”
Release of the entire autopsy would likely be a blow to Harris’s chances of becoming president in January 2029. Partly based on interviews with more than 300 prominent Democrats and others in all 50 states, it reportedly concludes that Harris’s unwavering support for U.S. weapons shipments to Israel was a significant factor in her loss to Donald Trump.
While she pursued an unsuccessful strategy of wooing scarce “moderate” Republican voters, many in the Democratic base were repelled by the full backing that Harris gave to President Biden’s massive arming of Israel as civilian deaths mounted in Gaza. She adhered to Biden’s admonition that there be “no daylight” between the two of them as she campaigned for president after he withdrew from the race.
At the time, polls showed that Harris was harming her election prospects by refusing to distance herself from Biden’s policy toward Israel. She evades that reality in her post-election book 107 Days, which dismisses antiwar protesters at her rallies as mere “hecklers.”
Harris’s protracted book tour has been beset by disruptions as well as her inability to provide cogent responses. At one appearance last fall, protesters yelled “Your legacy is genocide! Your legacy will always be genocide!” Her rejoinder was, “You know what, I am not president of the United States. You want to go to the White House and talk to him, then go on and do that.” Weeks later, speaking in Chicago, when a protester accused her of complicity in the Gaza horrors, she fired back: “Are you the same person that was telling people not to vote?”
Renewed attention to the Harris 2024 finances would also be unwelcome. Thirteen months after the election, the New York Times reported, “some Democratic donors have demanded a more thorough accounting of how exactly the party and Ms. Harris spent $1.5 billion in 15 weeks en route to losing every battleground state in 2024.” In mid-April, NBC News noted that “to date, a full accounting has not been made of who was paid what from the $1.5 billion, though the DNC later disclosed it carried more than $20 million in debt from Harris’s loss.”
A few weeks ago, Harris told an audience of influential black leaders that she’s “thinking about” running for president again and said that “I know what the job is and I know what it requires.” Politico described those comments as “the most explicit sign yet she’ll run for president in 2028.”
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