Rep. Marc Veasey of Texas became the first House Democrat to publicly call for Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin to resign, telling Semafor's Nicholas Wu on Thursday that Martin should "move on" after the party's long-delayed 2024 election autopsy landed with a thud.
The 192-page report, released more than 18 months after Kamala Harris lost to President Trump, was supposed to chart a path forward for a demoralized party. Instead, it arrived riddled with annotations, missing a conclusion section, and conspicuously silent on some of the most obvious factors behind the defeat. Martin himself refused to endorse it.
That combination of delay, disavowal, and omission has turned what was meant to be a moment of institutional accountability into a fresh leadership crisis at the DNC, with midterm elections now months away and no visible plan to close the gap.
Veasey did not mince words. As The Hill reported, the Texas Democrat framed his call as a matter of urgency, not personality:
"There doesn't seem to be a plan to turn things around and the clock is ticking. November is literally around the corner.... I believe it's time for him to move on."
That makes Veasey the first sitting House member known to break publicly with Martin. But he is far from alone in his frustration.
Former DNC Vice Chair David Hogg was quick to call for Martin's resignation as well. Hogg, who the Washington Examiner reported launched a petition through Leaders We Deserve seeking Martin's departure, cast the problem in stark terms:
"It's clear that Chair Ken Martin has lost the confidence of his staff, supporters, and most importantly, millions of Americans counting on the DNC to help Democrats win up and down the ballot in 2026 and 2028."
Hogg added that the party needs a new leader who demonstrates "a relentless commitment to actually changing the broken Democratic Party brand."
The autopsy itself tells a damaging story, not just about the 2024 loss, but about the party's inability to reckon honestly with its own failures. The report, written by Democratic strategist Paul Rivera, covered the party's trajectory over nearly two decades. CNN first reported on its release.
Its central finding will sound familiar to anyone who has watched the Democratic Party from the outside: the party had become too focused on being anti-Republican or anti-Trump rather than communicating its own vision to voters. That is a damning admission from the party's own internal review.
But what the report left out may matter more than what it included. The 192-page document made no mention of former President Biden's age, a factor that dominated public conversation for months before Biden withdrew from the race. It said nothing about the selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as Harris's running mate. And it ignored intraparty divisions over the Biden administration's handling of the war in Gaza, a fault line that cost Democrats support among young voters and Arab Americans in key states.
The pattern of avoidance extends well beyond the party's broader leadership dynamics, where uncomfortable truths about who is in charge and who is fading from view have been papered over for years.
Martin, for his part, tried to frame the release as an act of transparency, while simultaneously distancing himself from the product. He told reporters he made the report public because keeping the findings under wraps "ended up creating an even bigger distraction" than the one he had hoped to avoid ahead of the midterms.
Then he went further, offering a remarkable public disavowal of a report his own committee produced:
"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. But transparency is paramount."
Read that again. The chairman of the Democratic National Committee released a report he says he doesn't endorse, isn't proud of, and wouldn't put the party's name behind, and then asked the public to accept this as transparency.
The timeline makes the dysfunction harder to excuse. Martin had promised earlier last year to publish findings on Harris's loss to President Trump. He then reversed course and declined to release the findings. Only after months of sustained pressure from within his own party did he finally make the report public on Thursday.
That sequence, promise, retreat, delay, forced release, disavowal, is not the behavior of a party chairman who has things under control. It is the behavior of a leader who has lost the thread and is now trying to manage the fallout rather than lead through it.
The Democratic Party's internal turmoil is not limited to the DNC chairmanship. Figures across the party have found themselves at odds with their own institution in recent months, from Sen. John Fetterman's increasingly strained relationship with the party to controversies involving Democratic candidates that have forced leadership into awkward cleanup operations.
The pressure on Martin is not coming from one corner. Breitbart reported that Reps. Seth Moulton and Mark Pocan have also indicated Martin should step down, joining Veasey in what is becoming a widening revolt among elected Democrats.
Rep. Moulton was blunt: "He should resign," he said, citing Martin's "lack of leadership."
Critics have pointed not only to the autopsy debacle but also to the DNC's weak fundraising compared with the Republican National Committee, a structural disadvantage heading into a midterm cycle where Democrats need to flip seats, not just hold ground.
The party is simultaneously wrestling with questions about its future direction, including growing 2028 presidential speculation from ambitious figures who may see the current vacuum as an opportunity rather than a crisis.
Step back from the personnel drama for a moment and consider what the report actually says, and what it refuses to say.
The finding that Democrats spent nearly two decades defining themselves in opposition to Republicans rather than articulating their own positive vision is not a new observation. Conservative commentators, swing voters, and even some honest Democratic strategists have said as much for years. The fact that the party's own internal review now confirms it should be a wake-up call.
But the omissions are where the real cowardice lives. Leaving Biden's age out of a postmortem on the 2024 election is like writing a crash report that skips the part about the engine failure. Biden's cognitive decline was the single most discussed factor in the race for months. His withdrawal from the campaign was the most dramatic development of the entire cycle. To produce a 192-page document that pretends none of that happened is not analysis. It is avoidance.
The same goes for the Walz selection and the Gaza divisions. These were not minor footnotes. They were strategic choices and political fractures that shaped the outcome. A serious autopsy would have examined them honestly, even if the conclusions were uncomfortable. This one ducked them entirely.
That pattern of ducking hard truths has become something of a habit for the party, which has repeatedly struggled to hold its own members and candidates accountable when damaging controversies erupt.
Martin now sits in the worst possible position for a party chairman. He released a report he won't endorse. He delayed it so long that the delay itself became a scandal. The report he finally produced is incomplete and avoids the most obvious questions. And his own members, from a Texas congressman to a former vice chair to multiple House colleagues, are publicly telling him to leave.
Whether Martin survives this moment or not, the deeper problem remains. The Democratic National Committee just spent 18 months producing a document that confirms what everyone already knew, the party has no clear message, while carefully avoiding the specific decisions and failures that made 2024 a disaster.
You cannot fix what you refuse to name. And right now, the DNC cannot even agree on who should be in charge of the naming.
If this is what Democratic accountability looks like, Republican strategists can sleep easy through November.