Democrats’ ‘Autopsy’ Flop

The party is searching in all the wrong places for answers to why it lost in 2024.

It’s hard to know who is currently winning the contest for 2024 ostrichism: A Democratic Party conducting an election “autopsy” that ignores Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, or the hooting media that ignores everything beyond the Biden/Harris campaign disaster. It is this echo chamber that elected Donald Trump twice, and the question is when the left will remember that voters are the ones who pick the president.

Kamala Harris and Joe Biden hold hands at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Aug. 19.

The New York Times’s revelation that the Democratic National Committee’s 2024 campaign autopsy won’t touch on Mr. Biden’s decision to run again, his coronation of Ms. Harris, or her key decisions, is certainly worth a skewering. As is the news that the report will instead devote most of its attention to “outside groups,” including the party’s main SuperPAC, which apparently lost Democrats the whole kaboodle by misallocating advertising dollars.

The Times story sent writers racing for the best comparison put-down. An autopsy that lacked Biden/Harris, said the Times, was like “eating at a steakhouse and then reviewing the salad.” No, said the Nation, it was like “a production of Hamlet that leaves out not just the Prince of Denmark but also Claudius, Gertrude, the Ghost, and Ophelia.” Actually, said a Republican consultant in the Hill, it was like “doing John F. Kennedy’s autopsy, and only examining his feet.”

Fair enough, if obvious. Of course it mattered that the Biden inner circle chose to spend half of 2024 on a remake of “Weekend at Bernie’s.” Of course it mattered that Mr. Biden then anointed a woman who’d never won a single presidential primary vote, who’d become a liability as vice president, and who then ran a policy-free campaign centered on joy, media-avoidance and accusations of fascism.

Obvious, too, because deflection and finger-pointing are now de rigeur in the Democratic Party. In 2017, Hillary Clinton blamed her humiliating loss on sabotage by Russia, sexism, Jim Comey and an insufficiently prostrate press corps. The party blamed its 2022 midterm House loss on the public’s failure to understand the brilliance of Mr. Biden’s spending and economic agenda.

Yet the mainstream media’s willful insistence that the loss must be put down solely to Biden/Harris is equally comedic. The coverage is almost desperate to insist that the left’s only problem is the messenger—and the means of messaging. Which puts the media in the exact same spot as the “autopsy” it ridicules, as that document is headed to a finding that the party needs someone who does a better job of “connecting” and “explaining,” and who doubles down on organizing.

What both camps studiously ignore is the voter verdict. That is, the voters who last year decisively rejected the progressive agenda that defines today’s Democratic Party. A real autopsy would focus almost entirely on the unpopularity of the ideas that animate the political left: open borders, unrestrained spending, union power, climate diktats, police-bashing, anti-Israel sentiment, identity politics. It would note not just the polls showing this rejection, but the proof in the form of recent, extraordinary demographic shifts that show a left losing its grip on whole categories of once reliable voter groups.

A real autopsy would meditate on the disconnect between a nation that wants the freedom to build, grow and achieve, and a Democratic Party increasingly obsessed with locking up and redistributing a government-micromanaged ecosystem. It might even consider a case study of, say, San Francisco, for some evidence of how its policies fail in practice, and how voters respond on issues like crime or education. A few liberal policy wonks are feeling out a new direction—see the talk of an “abundance” agenda—yet party leaders have so far resolutely refused to go there.

An honest examination would drill in to the failure of eight years of lawfare, the party’s decision to weaponize government for political gain. It would ask if the partisan ambitions that fuel the progressive left’s calls to end the legislative filibuster, nationalize election laws, pack the Supreme Court or abolish the Electoral College are worth the distrust they sow among average voters who want stability. It would question what internal or cultural dysfunction allowed an entire Democratic establishment to salute a misguided leader, and worse, to excoriate those rare individuals (Dean Phillips) with the backbone to warn of a coming trainwreck.

None of this will happen, for a simple reason. The progressive left remains a minority in the liberal movement, but its true believers nonetheless occupy all the positions of power, including the leadership of the DNC (and most Beltway press jobs). They won’t criticize their basic world view. If change is to come to the Democratic Party—and it will—expect it to come in the form of a charismatic outsider who shows a new way, not via a pro forma autopsy by an insular claque that has no real regrets over the course that actually lost them an election.

Write to kim@wsj.com.