Forget the 2024 Autopsy. Here’s Why Democrats Can’t Shake Their Worst Political Liability.

The 2024 presidential election autopsy, which the Democratic National Committee commissioned and was shamed into releasing this week, is absolutely pathetic. Even in releasing it, the DNC felt honor-bound to mark it up, noting that some of the claims run counter to real evidence.

The DNC will doubtless move on from this shameful embarrassment, but the autopsy revealed something rather important: Democrats are still unwilling to seriously reconsider their worst political liability.

The autopsy, written by Paul Rivera and not endorsed by the DNC, went on and on about bolstering political efforts on the local and state level, even in red states—advice Democrats would do well to consider. It suggested focusing on economic issues, another salient point. It also recommended reaching out to male voters.

Yet the document tiptoes around the key reason why Americans are rejecting the Democratic Party. Woke ideology is a 10-ton albatross around the party’s neck, and until Democrats get serious about reconsidering it, they’ll just keep sinking into the mud.

Woke Makes Democrats Radioactive

Why do men increasingly reject the party? Perhaps because it leaned so far into feminism that it’s alienating most of us with a Y chromosome.

Why are more black voters rejecting the party? Perhaps because it focuses so much on demonizing commonsense conservative policies like voter ID as racist, rather than actually providing solutions to improve their lives.

While the autopsy noted that President Donald Trump’s campaign ads hitting then-Vice President Kamala Harris over transgender ideology resonated with voters, it failed to consider why that might be the case.

Rivera’s autopsy also noted that Republicans successfully branded Harris the “border czar,” but it never even so much as mentioned that President Joe Biden effectively opened the border and created a massive crisis.

Ultimately, the Democrats lost big in 2024, not because they failed to campaign enough in swing states or because they swapped out one unpopular candidate for another, but because of the ideology at the core of their message.

It’s not enough for Rivera, at his most cogent, to urge Democrats to “focus less on abstract issues and identity politics, and connect with voters on the issues they say matter most, including the economy, disaster relief, and addressing housing affordability.”

Democrats are wedded to that identity politics. Theirs is the party of transgender ideology, even when that means allowing boys to compete in girls sports and enter girls’ restrooms. Theirs is the party of critical race theory, which led them to claim racism is so “systemic” in America that we need to abolish the police. Theirs is the party of climate alarmism, which allows them to set up green slush funds to enrich cronies in the name of saving the planet.

To make matters worse, Democrats and their allies demonize those who disagree with their increasingly radical stances. Any dissent is “disinformation,” “Jim Crow,” or “hate.”

They even have the gall to openly discuss changing the rules of the political game to ensure permanent power—all in the name of championing “democracy.” Harris recently held a “No Bad Idea Brainstorm,” suggesting Democrats should run on abolishing the Electoral College and packing the Supreme Court.

The Institutionalization of Woke

These ideologies aren’t incidental to the Democrats—they form the heart of their belief system, and their vast nonprofit apparatus institutionalizes them.

In “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” I traced how the nonprofits pushing these woke ideologies formed the policy infrastructure that explained Biden’s least popular policies, from climate boondoggles and aggressive promotion of transgender issues to the weaponization of government against conservatives.

I demonstrated how critical race theory, transgender ideology, climate alarmism, and a preference for technocratic government—the constellation of issues I define as “woke”—drove policy under Biden. The Left has yet to distance itself from this vast nonprofit infrastructure.

Take the Southern Poverty Law Center, for example. If there was ever an organization the Democrats should sacrifice in order to demonstrate their dedication to truly becoming moderate, it should be the SPLC.

The SPLC has a Mad Libs of scandals, from a massive racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal in 2019, to accusations of union-busting in 2024, to longstanding concerns that it exaggerates “hate” by falsely branding mainstream conservatives and Christians, and now by funding members of the very hate groups it claims to exist to oppose. The SPLC has even branded a group of gays and lesbians—Gays Against Groomers—an “anti-LGBTQ+ hate group” because they oppose sexualized lessons for kids.

The SPLC is one of the most aggressive activist groups pushing the woke ideology that Americans find so nauseating.

Surely, a Democrat Party truly committed to winning moderates should be willing to drop the SPLC.

Yet, when the SPLC faced an indictment for wire fraud, Democrats came to its defense. They seemed not to care about the SPLC’s scandals or its role in worsening America’s polarization.

With all due respect to Paul Rivera and the DNC, a few more dollars to local Democrat operatives won’t paper over their party’s massive problem.

Democrats don’t need to tinker around the edges—they need to reconsider their commitments to woke ideology. That’s how they might win back the American people, but the SPLC is Exhibit A of why it won’t happen anytime soon.