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4 August 2026 - 10:00am
The Democratic National Committee is weathering an onslaught of brutal press reports, less than 100 days before the midterms. Despite surging momentum in swing states, Democrats are in a dire fiscal situation and seem to be reeling from internal drama.
A splashy New York Times story published yesterday morning signalled the DNC was set to face another difficult week. Reporter Shane Goldmacher aired claims that DNC chairman Ken Martin suppressed a critical chapter in the infamous 2024 autopsy. Martin hired his now-former friend Paul Rivera to conduct a comprehensive analysis of what went wrong at the last election on behalf of the party. The chair then declined to publish Rivera’s report, drawing sharp suspicion from activists and journalists. By May, Martin relented and published a bizarre draft of the report.
Now, the NYT is reporting Rivera’s claims that Martin declined to publish one particular chapter which cited Joe Biden’s decision to run for re-election as the “single point of failure”, dug into the party’s losses among minority voters, and pinned some of the blame on “generationally wealthy” consultants who were out of touch with the public. Martin claims he never received the chapter. Rivera argues he “personally handed” it to the DNC chair.
Needless to say, it’s not in the party’s interest to litigate this petty disagreement in the pages of the New York Times with three months to go before election day. Nor is it in the party’s interest for Martin to face questions about his integrity and competence as the DNC battles $18 million in debt with $16 million of cash on hand.
The party’s fiscal mess is currently the subject of major media reports and donor leaks. “It’s beyond embarrassing and it’s not going to get better until he is gone,” one Democratic Party bundler told Politico last Friday. “Ken is in a death spiral,” said another. For good measure, one more source added: “We need an overhaul.”
Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal compiled figures that suggest donors are simply shifting their giving away from the DNC and towards individual candidates in big races. Democratic candidates in these races are outraising their Republican counterparts, often handily. Jon Ossoff, Sherrod Brown, James Talarico and Roy Cooper fall into that category, putting states such as Ohio and Texas into genuine contention this autumn.
The reason for that shift might actually be the same reason Martin’s ill-fated autopsy is still being picked apart months after the DNC published it. Gary Czaplewski, who coordinates donor spending, told the WSJ that big donors felt after 2024 “like they didn’t get a return on their investment”. Though Czaplewski also insisted Martin couldn’t be blamed for that since he came into the DNC after Kamala Harris’s defeat, it’s exactly what he was put in the post to fix.
Martin’s goal was precisely to cure Democrats of their 2024 hangover. His stunning failure to handle the autopsy in a way that engendered confidence speaks to his inability to solve the party’s biggest problem — or even to make it better.
Democrats’ lead in the generic congressional ballot has actually declined since hitting a peak in mid-May, according to the RealClearPolitics average. Analysing polling from CNBC and the Washington Post in July, CNN data guru Harry Enten noted that while the Democrats are ahead, this is “by only 4 points, which is significantly less than what we saw in 2018 and 2006, when Democrats took back the House”. RCP’s average on this day in 2018, which turned out to be a “blue tsunami” year, had Democrats with exactly the same 6.9-point lead as they have now.
But if Republicans keep the Senate and Democrats lose key races in places such as Texas and Georgia, the party will still find itself trying to close the chapter on 2024.
