This is going to be a rather truncated column this week (at least the first parts of it), because we began today by writing a screed in place of our usual talking points, and it wound up so long that it's going to dominate the available room. So the other sections are all going to be heavily abbreviated, just to warn everyone in advance.

The most startling development in the political world this week was that Republicans in Congress (some of them, at least) seem to be waking up to the fact that Donald Trump's poll numbers are sinking like a stone and that the only thing he cares about is building his palatial ballroom and wreaking vengeance on anyone who annoys him (including plenty of Republicans).

Is this the beginning of a wider break from Trump for Republicans deeply worried about their prospects in the midterm elections? Only time will tell, but it's rather astonishing how fast things seem to be shifting. And this pushback is happening not just on one issue, but on a whole range of them.

To begin with, Senate Republicans refused to vote this week for two big issues for Trump, the billion dollars he wants from the taxpayers to build his ballroom, and the new $1.776 billion slush fund he's trying to create to pay off his buddies. The ballroom was supposed to be entirely paid for by donations. The slush fund is apparently to pay off all the January 6th rioters -- offer them "compensation" from the taxpayers for committing their crimes. That's enough money to pay each and every convicted January 6th rioter over a million dollars, mind you. Of your tax dollars.

It appears, at this point, that neither one of these things can pass the Republican Senate. Here's how one Democrat summed up the situation:

"Is it possible on May 21, 2026, Republicans finally found an ethical bridge too far?" asked Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat. "I wonder: Could it have been that golden ballroom for a billion bucks that was supposed to be freebie that Mar-a-Lago golf buddies were going to pitch in for? Or perhaps it was this incredible slush fund -- I don't know quite what to call it -- it was a Capitol Police Cop Beaters Relief Fund?"

A bill to force an end to Trump's war of choice in Iran actually won a vote in the Senate this week, although it was just a procedural vote (the final vote will come later). And the House had to cancel a vote on a similar bill to end the war because Republicans didn't have the votes to defeat it. Enough Republicans have soured on the war in both chambers of Congress to actually pass something to try to bring it to an end (spoiler alert: it won't -- Trump will merely veto it). That's a pretty stunning rebuke for Trump, though, even if it doesn't ever become law.

Trump has been having fun on his vengeance tour, taking down fellow Republicans who annoy him. This week this included Senator Bill Cassidy, who didn't even make it into his state's runoff primary election. What this means is one more GOP senator who now does not have to care what Trump thinks of him until he leaves the Senate at the end of December.

Another senator, John Cornyn, also now has reasons to defy Trump whenever he feels like it, since Trump endorsed Ken Paxton over him in next week's Texas GOP primary. This was seen as a slap in the face by many Republicans (who are worried that Paxton could lose the seat for them, while Cornyn would have had a better chance of winning).

The Senate also rejected Trump's order for them to fire the parliamentarian, which is another sign of rebellion from the GOP.

It's too early to call it an open revolt, perhaps, but seeing such cracks in Republican support for Trump is certainly interesting to watch. The longer Trump refuses to end his war of choice in Iran, the higher prices are going to rise, and sane Republicans know this could doom them in November. For the past two years, Republicans in Congress have rolled over and done everything Trump demanded, but all of a sudden they're having some second thoughts about this blind allegiance -- especially with Trump's job approval numbers sinking into the low 30s.

So it will indeed be interesting to watch, over the next month or two. Is this a real break from Trump? Will he increasingly be treated like a lame duck by his own party?
One can only hope.

 

Progressive Democrats chalked up a big win this week, in a Pennsylvania House district. In one of the bluest districts in the entire country, Chris Rabb won the primary election after getting a big endorsement from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He did so by defeating the Philadelphia political machine and a candidate from a local political dynasty, by a whopping 15 points. Rabb called his victory a signal "that the era of establishment politics is coming to an end... folks who are framed as radical or far left by mainstream media and establishment politics... are very much in the moral center."

His victory in November is almost a foregone conclusion, because the district is such a safe Democratic stronghold. So we'll be looking forward to seeing Chris Rabb in the House, next January. For now, we are awarding him the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award.

[Congratulate Pennsylvania state representative (and soon-to-be U.S. Representative) Chris Rabb on his official state legislative contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]

 

There's one person who was not just disappointing but downright embarrassing and incompetent in the news this week, but we're going to get to what Democratic political consultant Paul Rivera did in a moment, so we'll just mention him in passing.

The Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week was Colorado Governor Jared Polis, who just commuted the 9-year prison sentence of a woman who was not just an election denier but was convicted of criminally tampering with voting machines under her supervision after the 2020 presidential election.

By week's end, the Colorado Democratic Party had censured Polis for doing so, and we have to agree with their rebuke. In fact, there's really not much more to say about it. Governor Polis was easily the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week.

[Contact Colorado Governor Jared Polis on his official contact page, to let him know what you think of his actions.]

 

Volume 842 (5/22/26)

As mentioned, we are pre-empting our usual talking points section this week because we have to address some rampant stupidity within the Democratic Party. So rather than our usual talking points, we've got a free-floating rant instead.

This week the long-awaited "autopsy report" of the 2024 campaign was released by the Democratic National Committee, apparently because it was going to leak anyway. This report has been a source of friction within the party, since the new party chair had promised to release it when he took over, but then later backtracked on that promise and decided it would never be released.

After reading the entire 192 pages of it, it's pretty easy to see why he was so reluctant to make it public. Because it is nothing short of an embarrassment.

It is merely a draft of a report. There are entire sections missing -- such as the overall conclusion and any appendices showing sources and methodology. Those are pretty big things to leave out, you have to admit.

What is there is just downright embarrassing -- there's no other way to put it. It is a mishmash of buzzwords which wind up not saying very much at all. There is endless discussion of what money was spent and where, but virtually no discussion of why Kamala Harris lost. Subjects that were completely skipped include such things as Israel, the war in Gaza, and the fact that Joe Biden stayed in the race far too long.

The easy way to describe such omissions would be "the elephant in the room," but since our political parties have representative animals and the elephant is the other team's mascot, it would make more sense to say "the donkey in the room." There's a huge donkey right there in the middle of the room, but the report doesn't mention it at all, in more than one way.

There are typos and misspellings and other errors sprinkled throughout the document (such as stating that John Boehner stepped down as speaker of the House in 2014 when he actually did so in 2015). The language used is downright cringeworthy at times. Here's one example from very early on:

Effective parties, understanding history rarely repeats itself, it does often rhyme, make it a point to study electoral outcomes after each cycle to identify potential improvements to every aspect of their campaigns. John Adams argued "Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right...and a desire to know."

What that is even attempting to say is a mystery. There are plenty of political slogans, but they are pretty laughably inadequate. Here's just a sampling of a few:

Build to Win and Build to Last

Win Anywhere

Majority Party Strategy

Organize Early, Organize Always, and Organize Everywhere

The broader the net, the broader the coalition, the stronger the Democratic Party will be. Because none of us is as smart as all of us.

Seriously? That is going to win elections for Democrats? No wonder the document was buried and not made public until now. The document, early on, sets an impressive goal (with a few buzzwords thrown in):

There are always hot takes after an election -- but hot takes will lead to mistakes if we do not take the time to thoroughly explore what occurred, what worked well, and what should have been done better.

But this goal is never achieved -- in fact, in major ways, it is not even attempted. Even the analysis it does attempt to make winds up falling flat -- such as discussing gender differences in voting patterns without even mentioning the gender differences in the candidates it is using as examples (you'd think that "How many men couldn't vote for Kamala Harris because she is a woman?" would be at least mentioned, but you would be wrong).

The biggest donkey in the room was the unprecedented nature of Biden deciding to run for re-election in the first place, and then dropping out at a very late date. There is absolutely no analysis of what voters thought about Biden deciding not to serve just one term (which plenty of people had assumed would be the case) and run for re-election in the first place. The subject of him dropping out so late in the race is only mentioned in the document in passing, and never analyzed in any meaningful way. Here's the sort of "donkey in the room" language that is used, often while discussing completely separate subjects:

Harris struggled with definition beyond "not Trump" and "prosecutor vs. felon." The truncated campaign timeline didn't help, but the campaign did not quickly resolve on how to tag Trump and define Harris.

. . .

The late switch to Harris limited messaging and organizing options and produced predictable results. Down ballot Democrats who took different approaches performed significantly better. Defining the opponent works best if the candidate driving the message has already introduced themselves to voters through an effective framework.

. . .

There was a decision in the 2024 Democratic leadership not to engage in negative advertising at the scale required. The supporters of this approach argued Donald Trump's negatives were known, obvious, and baked in, so it would not be a particularly effective approach to engage in negative messaging when the main priority was to introduce a relatively unknown nominee after the unprecedented candidate switch.

The whole "Biden dropping out" thing is mentioned only tangentially, in passing. It is never actually squarely addressed at all. The closest the document ever gets to tackling the issue doesn't come until page 70, but even there the subject is not really directly addressed in any useful way:

The debate obviously changed many things. The dial-testing during the debate demonstrated the weakness of the President's performance, and a post-debate survey was scrapped. The analytics team measured voter reaction, and reported seeing little change. The fundamental need to earn votes from the target audiences remained, and there was no positive movement towards the campaign. Post-debate, and about a week before the candidate switch, there were internal discussions about how to prepare a campaign for the Vice President. In 2020, when Kamala Harris was selected by President Biden to serve as the running mate, many voters were excited and curious.

Then it moves on to air some sour grapes from the Harris team, about how Joe Biden didn't give Harris enough to do during their term in office and how he didn't prepare her and support her enough, just in case he had to step aside and turn over his campaign to her with 100 days left on the calendar.

Almost half of the report deals with money spent, in excruciating detail. This is understandable, since it is a report to the D.N.C. about what it should do in the next election cycle, but it is full of assumptions that there will always be a seemingly-endless supply of money to spend and that it should be spent freely, all the time, on everything. That's not even much of an exaggeration:

There are many ongoing philosophical and practical conversations within the party and broader ecosystem about the best ways to engage Americans. There's been debate within progressive and Democratic circles for a long time about, first, who should lead organizing – the hard side or outside organizations (both), where should it live (everywhere), and how it should happen (all the time).

. . .

There used to be big debates and big fights within campaigns about how to allocate resources for media, for organizing, for all forms of voter contact, for the use of the candidate's time, for fundraising, for developing surrogates, for research and strategy development.

In healthy campaigns, the answer to all those questions should be "yes," because healthy campaigns should have the resources to do everything.

Well, golly gee! Problem solved!

Because this draft was written a while ago (and then buried for a year), it is already incredibly dated. For example, there is a huge section on technology -- without a single mention of A.I. That's a pretty big thing to ignore, these days.

It's easy to see, after reading this report, why the D.N.C. chair didn't want to release it. Not because of anything it said, but because the entire thing is just such an embarrassment. The version they did release is annotated. Starting at the top of each and every page, the following message is displayed, in italicized red text:

Disclaimer: This document reflects the views of the author, not the DNC. The DNC was not provided with the underlying sourcing, interviews, or supporting data for many of the assertions contained herein and therefore cannot independently verify the claims presented.

Then there are individual little snarky notes (also in red) sprinkled throughout, saying things like:

No evidence provided for this claim

Claim contradicts public reporting

Data appears to be inaccurate and contradicts public reporting

Analysis not supported by publicly available data

No sourcing provided for several claims in this section

All of which seem to be saying: "Don't blame us, this is just something some lame consultant wrote."

Which is actually the heart of the problem, right there.

Political consultants make money by attempting to explain things that often defy easy explanation. There are dozens of pages in this report that draw sweeping conclusions about the differences between how Harris performed in individual states versus how Democrats down the ballot performed. Often times, these differences are only shifts of single-digit percentages, but they are held up as the result of dramatic differences in campaign style.

The conclusions about these down-ballot races are often so garbled as to be meaningless. Here's just one example, talking about the difference in the New Hampshire governor's race and Kamala Harris:

The Definition Problem. The campaign never established what Craig stood for beyond "not Ayotte/Trump."

This mirrored the national campaign's struggles with Harris. Both campaigns faced the same challenge: difficulty defining the candidate and opponent, building enthusiasm, or making a compelling case. Harris' win in NH may be more an anti-Trump than pro-Harris outcome.

So... the Craig campaign lost because it only defined itself as being anti-Trump, but the Harris campaign in the same state won because it was so anti-Trump. Um... what? Just being anti-Trump is held up as a problem and the reason Harris won, at the same time. Other of these conclusions were just as confusingly meaningless.

If Democrats really want to get better at winning elections, they really should pay a lot less attention to hair-splitting and navel-gazing and instead concentrate on the big picture -- which is almost completely ignored in this document.

Remember when the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed, in Baltimore? The equivalent to this report would be if someone commissioned a 200-page analysis of the bridge disaster which spent dozens upon dozens of pages minutely analyzing the design of the bridge, the materials used, the roadway, the volume and frequency of traffic, the ambient temperatures, the weather, and everything else under the sun except the fact that a gigantic ship crashed into the bridge. That's truly how bad this report is, folks.

The Democratic Party often gets lost down rabbit holes of its own making. One example would be the fierce debate over whether Democrats should run on "abundance" or "affordability." People who really should know better spend way too much time and energy hashing out the supposed differences between those two concepts. Or whether the party "should move to the center or move to the left." A poll was just conducted on these weighty questions, and the result was about what you would expect:

The poll found very little awareness of the so-called "abundance" movement, which calls for making it easier for the government and the private sector to build more housing and energy. More than 90 percent of the Democratic coalition said they had never heard of it.

While political consultants will bicker about the poll's findings on whether to move to the center or to the left, they will probably absolutely ignore the clearest result the poll discovered:

With Democrats generally satisfied with the party’s ideological position, the poll arguably contains the outlines of a potential path forward for the party. Respondents offered relatively clear answers on three basic questions that have divided the party since the last election: They say Democrats should embrace economic populism, oppose aid to Israel and find modest ways to shift toward the center on the cultural issues thought to have contributed to President Trump’s victory in 2024.

The DNC report, just to hammer home how clueless Democrats can be, did not mention Israel or Gaza once, even though it was a rather large factor in why a significant number of voters did not vote for Harris. It also never really addressed the culture-war issues in any detail.

The report endlessly picked apart how effective the campaign's messaging was but without ever addressing the message itself and any shortcomings it may have had. Economic populism is the real answer to Democrats' woes, but the party just cannot seem to wrap its head around this basic fact.

Voters don't want to hear a candidate talk about "economic populism" or "abundance" or "affordability," instead they want candidates to talk about how damn much everything costs. Plain language is the answer, and taking a stand against how everyone is being continually ripped off by giant corporations run by billionaires who pay no taxes is the way forward.

Compare just about any speech given by Bernie Sanders or Zohran Mamdani or Graham Platner with buzzwords such as "Build to Win and Build to Last" or any of the other catchphrases from the autopsy report, and the problem becomes crystal-clear. Voters do not want some focus-group-tested fancy word to describe a candidate's goals, instead they want a candidate who tells them how he or she will fight the high cost of living, period. With concrete plans and examples and proposed solutions.

Democrats may win big this November, because Donald Trump has done such a spectacular job of screwing up the economy. More than all the millions spent on campaign ads, the giant sign on every streetcorner the with huge numbers listing the price of gasoline may be the key to this victory.

But 2028 will probably require a more focused strategy from Democrats. The war with Iran is so obviously the cause of the high price of gas now, but in two years' time Democrats can't count on Trump doing something equally as stupid at the start of an election year.

Democrats will likely have to make a cohesive case for how the party can address economic concerns without such an easy answer as the Iran war to point to.

It would be nice to have some sort of analysis about what policies the party should champion in order to make this case to the American people. It would be nice if comparisons were made between campaigns that actually offered such answers and campaigns that tried to skate on gauzy "I'll fight for you!" promises without any details ever given as to what precisely that means. That would be a very helpful thing for the Democratic Party to study.

Instead of the endless arguments about what "moving to the center" means versus "moving to the left," why not go out and listen to what the voters care about and then create some solutions to address those concerns?

That would indeed be a valuable thing. But the autopsy just released doesn't do any of it. It doesn't even pretend to address such issues in any way.

Democrats deserve better than this pathetic attempt at an autopsy report, that much is pretty obvious.

-- Chris Weigant

 

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Cross-posted at: Democratic Underground