Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin is facing increased scrutiny from his party, including calls to resign, after he changed his months-long stance and released the party’s long-awaited autopsy on its 2024 election loss.
After months of refusing to release the report, which was meant to be an analysis of how and why former Vice President Kamala Harris lost the 2024 presidential election, Martin flipped and released the report Thursday.
Martin claimed he initially believed that putting out the report would be a distraction but then said that not releasing the report became “an even bigger distraction.”
Critics within his own party argued the report released Thursday was far from comprehensive.
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“I think it’s pretty unbelievable that Gaza would not be mentioned once in the autopsy report,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., told reporters Thursday.
“I think it was very clearly a major dynamic and a major thread that was happening in 2024, regardless of how one feels about that issue, the fact that it’s not even addressed, I think, is a major oversight, and I think that for young people it was a huge part of the environment. I can tell you for myself, as a candidate during that cycle, there’s no way that it was an ignorable issue or totally immaterial. So, I think that you know it’s a real disservice to not speak to that or include or assess that,” she said.
Ocasio-Cortez was far from the only congressional critic.
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., also criticized the document’s failure to mention Gaza.
“One of the reasons we lost was our blank check to Israel and Netanyahu while they committed genocide in Gaza,” he said in a video posted to his YouTube channel.
“We must speak and confront hard truths if this party is to win in 2028,” he added.
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Others, like Rep. Mark Veasey, D-Texas, went as far as calling for Martin to resign.
“There doesn’t seem to be a plan to turn things around and the clock is ticking,” he told Semafor, adding, “November is literally around the corner… I believe it’s time for him to move on.”
Democratic strategist Steve Schale called the report release “an unmitigated s—show,” according to NBC, adding “there’s just no confidence in the competence in the DNC.”
Martin himself admitted the report’s inadequacy.
“I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards,” he wrote Thursday, claiming he could not “in good faith put the DNC’s stamp of approval on it.”
Entire sections of the report, which was written by Democratic strategist Paul Rivera, according to CNN, were left blank, and the document was reportedly riddled with omissions and factual errors.
Aside from omitting any mention of the Gaza conflict splitting party voters, the report also failed to mention former President Joe Biden’s age or Kamala Harris’ selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.
Fox News Digital contacted the DNC for additional comment.
Fox News’ Dan Scully contributed to this report.
