Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin is facing open calls to step down from members of his own party's congressional caucus after the DNC finally released its nearly 200-page autopsy of the 2024 election, a document Martin himself refused to endorse and sat on for months before bowing to pressure.
The report, written by Democratic strategist Paul Rivera, paints a grim portrait of a party that has "vacillated between stagnation and retrogression" since Barack Obama's 2008 victory. It faults both the Biden White House and the Harris campaign for failing to define their candidate as anything more than "not Trump", and says Democrats failed to make a strong enough case against the former president during the 2024 cycle.
Martin released the autopsy Thursday alongside a letter that amounted to a public disavowal of the document he was publishing. That remarkable combination, months of delay followed by a disclaimer, drew immediate fire from Democratic lawmakers who said the party cannot afford another day of drift.
In his letter, Martin did not try to spin the findings. He ran from them. As Breitbart reported, Martin wrote:
"I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards, and it won't meet your standards. I don't endorse what's in this report, or what's left out of it. I could not in good faith put the DNC's stamp of approval on it."
He then added that "transparency is paramount" and said he was releasing the report "in its entirety, unedited and unabridged, with annotations for claims that couldn't be verified."
Read that again. The chairman of the Democratic National Committee released his own party's post-election review and told the public he doesn't stand behind it. He didn't offer a competing explanation. He didn't present a plan. He published the document, washed his hands of it, and asked everyone to move along.
That satisfied no one.
Rep. Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat, did not mince words. He told Axios that Martin should resign, citing "his lack of leadership." Moulton called it "utterly nuts it took us this long to release the autopsy."
Rep. Mark Pocan, a Wisconsin Democrat, agreed with a radio caller who argued Martin should be replaced. "I agree," Pocan said. "Having what we have right now is not doing it."
The fact that a sitting congressman would validate a random caller's demand for the party chair's ouster on live radio tells you something about the mood inside the Democratic caucus. This is not backroom grumbling. It is on-the-record rejection.
Rep. Marc Veasey of Texas told a news outlet that "there doesn't seem to be a plan to turn things around and the clock is ticking." He added: "I believe it's time for him to move on."
Three members of Congress, from three different states, all saying the same thing publicly. That kind of coordinated candor does not happen by accident in a party that prizes message discipline, or at least used to.
The dissatisfaction extended well beyond Capitol Hill. Dan Pfeiffer, a former top Obama adviser and prominent political commentator, told The Washington Post that Martin is "not the right person to lead the DNC at this time." Pfeiffer's voice carries weight inside Democratic circles; his willingness to say it publicly signals that the party's professional class has lost confidence in Martin's stewardship.
Danielle Butterfield, executive director of the progressive super PAC Priorities USA, went further. She said Martin is "preventing us from moving forward" and offered a line that captured the absurdity of the moment: "It's pretty damning that instead of actually talking about the substance of the report, we're just talking about whether or not Ken Martin should resign."
She has a point, though perhaps not the one she intended. The botched autopsy rollout has become the story, swallowing the findings themselves. Martin's decision to delay the report, then release it with a public disclaimer, guaranteed that the conversation would center on him rather than on the party's failures. A leader who makes himself the distraction is, by definition, not leading.
The report itself, at 192 pages, delivers a bleak assessment. AFP reported that the autopsy describes a party drifting since Obama's 2008 win, not building, not adapting, but oscillating between stagnation and retreat. It faults the Biden White House and the Harris campaign for running a campaign defined almost entirely by opposition to one man rather than by any affirmative vision.
That finding should surprise no one who watched the 2024 race unfold. The Harris campaign struggled to articulate what it stood for beyond "not Trump," and the autopsy confirms that this was not just a perception problem but a strategic failure recognized internally.
The broader trajectory the report describes, nearly two decades of institutional decline masked by occasional wins, tracks with what conservative observers have noted for years. The Democratic Party's grassroots infrastructure has hollowed out in large swaths of the country. Its leadership dynamics remain dominated by figures from a previous era, while the bench of younger talent either lacks national profile or pushes the party further from the median voter.
Mega Democrat donor John Morgan appeared on Fox News Thursday night and delivered a verdict that cut deeper than any congressional statement. Morgan said the party's policies were "sure losers" and pointed to specific issues he believed drove voters away: what he described as "woke" culture, "open borders," and "men unfairly competing against women in sports."
Morgan's complaint highlights a tension the autopsy itself reportedly sidesteps. Critics argued the 192-page document ignores the issues that actually caused voters to reject Kamala Harris and other Democrats in 2024. If the party's own post-mortem cannot name the policy positions that alienated the electorate, the exercise is less an autopsy and more an avoidance mechanism.
Axios also reported that DNC fundraising numbers were "anemic" compared to the party's GOP counterpart, another data point suggesting institutional rot that predates and outlasts any single election cycle. When a party cannot raise money and cannot win elections, the question is not whether to change leadership but how fast.
Perhaps the most damaging detail in this episode is the timeline. The report was first given to the DNC last fall. Martin chose not to release it to the public, saying he did not want to create a distraction from Democratic wins in November.
Months passed. Pressure built. And when Martin finally relented on Thursday, he paired the release with a letter that all but told the public to ignore the document. The delay itself became evidence of the very problem the autopsy diagnosed: a party that avoids hard truths, defers accountability, and hopes the news cycle will move on before anyone notices.
The pattern is familiar. Democrats have spent years struggling with internal fractures over identity and direction. The autopsy was supposed to be the honest reckoning. Instead, it arrived late, disclaimed by its own publisher, and immediately overshadowed by the question of whether that publisher should keep his job.
Martin has not publicly indicated he will resign. But the calls are now bipartisan in origin within the Democratic coalition, members of Congress, former senior White House advisers, super PAC leaders, and major donors all saying, in different ways, that the current arrangement is not working.
The DNC's challenge extends beyond one chairman. The autopsy's finding that the party has drifted since 2008 suggests structural problems that no single personnel change can fix. Democrats must decide whether they want to confront the policy positions that cost them voters or continue treating elections as branding exercises where the product never changes, only the packaging does.
The party's next generation of ambitious figures, including those already fueling speculation about 2028 bids, will inherit whatever the DNC becomes in the next two years. Whether that institution is rebuilt or simply reshuffled will say more about the party's future than any autopsy ever could.
When the chairman of your party releases a report and tells you not to believe it, you don't have a messaging problem. You have a leadership vacuum, and the voters figured that out long before the autopsy confirmed it.