Our Broken Politics
The Democratic Party's post-election autopsy ran 50,000 words and never once mentioned Gaza, the issue that drove many of its own voters away.
Rev. J. Mark Davidson
5/28/20263 min read
After the Harris-Walz presidential ticket went down to defeat in the 2024 election, the Democratic Party establishment commissioned an "autopsy" report of what went wrong. The report was completed months ago, but it was shelved until recently. It is well known that millions of Democratic voters stayed home or voted for non-Democratic candidates in the 2024 election. The question was why? A YouGov and IMEU (Institute for Middle East Understanding) poll released in January 2025 showed that the primary reason for the defection of Democrats was the genocide in Gaza. Quoting findings from the poll:
"29% of voters nationally who voted for Biden in 2020 and cast a ballot for someone besides Kamala Harris in 2024 say 'ending Israel’s violence in Gaza' was the top issue affecting their vote choice (the economy was second)…By more than a three-to-one margin, Biden 2020 voters who did not vote for Harris say that they would have been more likely to have voted for Harris if she pledged to break from Biden’s policy toward Gaza by promising to withhold additional weapons to Israel."
IMEU’s conclusion puts it clearly: "The Democratic Party needs to come to terms with the real reasons it lost the presidency in November…(Despite) over a year of unprecedented protests and calls for Biden to stop sending weapons to Israel, party leadership failed to listen to its own voters, who overwhelmingly want their government to end its complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza."
Astonishingly, of the 50,000 words in the "autopsy" report, the word "Gaza" was not mentioned a single time. Not once. This is political dysfunction on a grand scale. The first live-streamed genocide in history kept heartbroken voters, young and old, riveted to their phones from October 2023 to November 2024. Social media showed Israel flattening apartment buildings, burying hundreds of families under the rubble. Gruesome images of Israel bombing hospitals and destroying schools and universities stoked outrage and revulsion. Nothing did more to drive people into the streets than Palestinian children’s bodies blown apart and set on fire. Voters were angry and frustrated with the bipartisan support for Israel and American complicity in genocide, and clamored for change. Yet the "autopsy" report acted as though there was "nothing to see here." No lessons learned.
Several factors have broken our politics. Here are three that are worth our consideration:
The Democratic National Committee is captive to the same political consultants who advised the Harris campaign to stick with the Biden policy. These high-priced consultants focus on how to acquire political power. Moral considerations rarely come into play. Party leadership should have wisely concluded that consultants who guided the Harris campaign off the cliff should NOT be rehired. Instead, the party establishment doubled down and simply "rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic."
The DNC is stuck in the past. They still believe that the winning formula for the future is focusing on popular domestic issues, but strenuously avoiding foreign policy issues, especially Palestine-Israel and the genocide in Gaza. This approach is sadly misguided. It reveals a deep disconnect between the base and the political elites in Washington. It shows a disillusioning lack of courage. The DNC’s nauseating preference for "mediocre moderation" over bold leadership is driving young people away from the party. The electorate is trending away from its historic support for Israel, and all signs point toward increasing sympathy for the Palestinian cause. Progressive policy positions such as ending or conditioning US military aid to Israel are no longer on the fringe of American politics. A recent vote in the Senate on Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) resolution to halt arms sales to Israel won 40 votes, something that would have been unthinkable two years ago. The April 2026 John Zogby Strategies poll co-commissioned by Voices for Justice in Palestine and the Arab-American Institute confirms that Americans find Israeli actions increasingly unpopular. Yet, the DNC is ignoring these trends, pretending they are irrelevant to acquiring power in 2026 and 2028.
The DNC has a campaign-financing problem. They are dependent on wealthy donors, many of whom are staunchly pro-Israel. Supposedly, "the smart money" is that Democrats cannot win national elections without wealthy donors’ money, so they tamp down criticism of Israel in the party, and suppress grassroots resolutions codifying the changes a growing majority of voters want. As long as the Democratic Party establishment ignores Americans’ profound moral outrage over the American-Israeli genocide in Gaza, as well as Israel’s flagrant violations of international humanitarian law in Lebanon and Iran, they will further alienate a significant contingent of likely voters. So long as they continue to hew toward the "milquetoast middle" of the political spectrum, they will continue losing support. By giving a tone-deaf, play-it-safe consultant class too much influence on the policy of the party, they disenfranchise grassroots activists. So long as party leadership keeps bending the knee to the Israel Lobby, including the Democratic Majority for Israel, the defection from the Democratic Party will continue. Note to the DNC: If your goal is to lose more elections, keep on doing what you’re doing.